Mr R Wagener v The Right Honourable Michael Gove MP — 2022

Mr Wagener had worked for HMRC from 3 October 1983 until he retired on 30 April 2021. He has Type 1 diabetes and had also been diagnosed with ME shortly before retirement. His complaint arose from a request for the Minister to exercise the discretion in rule 2.24 of the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme to grant added years of reckonable service, which he said would have improved his pension and lump sum. The ET1 was treated as a disability discrimination claim; although an age box had been ticked, the claimant confirmed that he was not bringing an age discrimination complaint.

The hearing was a preliminary one about the correct respondent and strike-out, not a final merits hearing. The tribunal accepted that Mr Gove had not personally seen or decided the claimant's letters, that the Civil Service and Royal Mail Pensions Team in the Cabinet Office had handled the operational correspondence, and that any business case for added years would in practice be considered within the Cabinet Office / Civil Service pensions machinery. It concluded that Mr Gove had no personal involvement in the claimant's case and was not the claimant's employer, a responsible person under section 61, an employer or principal for sections 109-112, or otherwise the proper party to the claim.

The tribunal held that Mr Gove had been apparently wrongly included as a respondent and removed him under rule 34. It refused the strike-out application, saying the pleading was not yet concluded and that further particulars were needed before the legal basis of any Equality Act claim against the Cabinet Office could be properly understood. The Cabinet Office was joined as respondent in substitution, and the existing ET3 was to stand as its response subject to later amendment. The tribunal also noted a separate second claim against HMRC, case 2401493/2022, but did not combine it with this case.