Objective justification for pension lawyers

Copyright © 2025 LexisNexis
Produced in partnership with Elizabeth Ovey of Radcliffe Chambers
Practice notes

Objective justification for pension lawyers

Copyright © 2025 LexisNexis

Produced in partnership with Elizabeth Ovey of Radcliffe Chambers

Practice notes
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This Practice Note contains references to case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). For guidance on whether EU judgments are binding on UK courts, see Practice Note: Assimilated law — Assimilated case law.

What is objective justification?

As explained below, objective justification may be a defence to a claim of either direct or indirect discrimination, but is available in only very limited circumstances in cases of direct discrimination.

Under the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010), there is prima facie indirect discrimination if A applies to B a provision, criterion or practice (sometimes called a 'PCP') which is discriminatory in relation to a relevant protected characteristic of B’s. A PCP is discriminatory if:

  1. •

    A applies it, or would apply it, to persons with whom B does not share the characteristic

  2. •

    it puts or would put persons with whom B shares the characteristic at a particular disadvantage when compared with persons with whom B does not share it, and

  3. •

    it puts or would put B at that disadvantage

This

Elizabeth Ovey
Elizabeth Ovey chambers

Barrister, Radcliffe Chambers

Elizabeth has a general Chancery practice with particular emphasis on pensions (developing from the trust side of her practice) and on retail financial services (developing from an early specialisation in building society law). She also does a considerable amount of professional negligence work in these areas and other areas in which a Chancery background is of assistance.

Her first substantial involvement in pensions law came when she was instructed in relation to a small miners’ pension scheme during the days of the miners’ strikes in the 1980s and she has done an increasing amount of pensions work since those days. She is a contributing editor of Halsbury’s Laws vol. 80 (Personal and Occupational Pensions) (2020). She is now on the Lexis PSL pensions section editorial board and is a contributor to Lexis PSL through a series of practice notes on various aspects of discrimination and occasional case analysis. 

Her financial services work involves in particular constitutional matters relating to mutual societies, regulatory issues and drafting standard terms and conditions to comply with the developing requirements relating to unfair contract terms. She is a joint editor of Wurtzburg and Mills on Building Society Law (looseleaf edition) and a co-author of Retail Mortgages: Law, Regulation and Procedure (2013).
 
A particular highlight of her professional negligence practice was a trip to the House of Lords in Johnson v Gore Wood [2002] 2 AC 1. 

She continues to deal with other Chancery matters.

She sits as a fee-paid judge of the Upper Tribunal.

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Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom
Related legal acts:
Key definition:
Objective justification definition
What does Objective justification mean?

The EU courts, followed by the EU Commission have created the possibility that firms can present objective justification for conduct that appears to abuse a dominant position.

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