Challenge to compulsory retirement age fails

The High Court has upheld the default retirement age of 65

  In R (on the application of Age UK) v Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills and ors, or the Heyday Challenge as it is more commonly known, the High Court has held that the UK’s default retirement age (DRA) of 65 is lawful. A challenge to the lawfulness of Reg 3 of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which allows employees to objectively justify direct age discrimination, was also rejected.
  The European Court of Justice (Brief 873) previously held that the DRA, contained in Reg 30 of the Age Regulations, fell within the scope of the EC Equal Treatment Framework Directive (No.2000/78). Thus, the DRA would be age discriminatory unless ‘justified by legitimate social policy objectives, such as those related to employment policy, the labour market or vocational training' achieved by appropriate and necessary means’.
  The High Court was satisfied that the Government had proved to the requisite high standard that a DRA was a proportionate means of achieving legitimate social policy aims such as securing the integrity of the labour market and its short-term competiveness. The Court then considered whether setting the DRA at 65 was proportionate to the social policy objectives. There were powerful reasons why a DRA higher than 65 could have been adopted, such as creating a cultural change in relation to age discrimination and retirement, and ensuring that the DRA would keep pace with future rises in the state pension age.
  The Court indicated that, if a DRA of 65 had been introduced in 2009, it would not have found it to be proportionate. However, the challenge to the Regulations had to be judged as at the date it was begun, in 2006. The Court had regard to the fact that, in the consultations on the Regulations, the preponderance of consultees supported 65 as the DRA, that no one was making a case for age 68 or so, and that age 70 commanded little popular support. On balance, the court concluded that setting the DRA at 65 was within the competence of the Government in implementing the Directive. Mr. Justice Blake went on to comment that he might have reached a different conclusion if the Government had not brought forward its review of the Regulations to 2010. He also noted that he ‘cannot presently see how 65 could remain as a DRA after the review’.
  The full transcript can be read at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/2336.html