Held, appeal allowed. (1) As a matter of practice, based on comity and good sense, rather than on legal rules of precedent, decisions of any of the appellate courts of England and Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland should be treated as having persuasive authority when a similar legal point arose in one of the other jurisdictions. However, whilst there was a long-established and strict rule of practice in relation to the uniform interpretation of revenue statutes, there was no justification for extending that approach beyond the interpretation of tax statutes. In other areas of the law, the best approach, as a matter of pragmatic good sense, was for the appellate courts of the United Kingdom to treat each other’s decisions on the interpretation of legislation with great respect, since it was undesirable that there should be conflicting decisions on the construction of provisions which were intended to apply in the same way in more than one jurisdiction. Appellate courts should not, though, regard themselves as being under an obligation to follow decisions which they considered to be wrong nor did they need to identify some other compelling reason for departing from a wrong decision or exceptional circumstances. In such circumstances, appellate courts should explain clearly why they considered the decision to be incorrect, give what they considered to be the correct decision, and grant leave to appeal to the Supreme Court so that the difference of views could be resolved without undue delay. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal should have departed from the decision of the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal if it considered that it was wrong (paras 60–61, 92–102, 160).

(2) Being the surviving partner of a person with a lifelong inability to work through disability to the extent necessary to generate payment of the minimum prescribed level of national insurance contributions for bereavement support payment under section 30 of the Pensions Act 2014 was a relevant “status” for the purposes of article 14 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. A breach of article 14 could arise where, without an objective and reasonable justification, there was a failure to treat differently persons whose situations were materially different. The contribution condition’s aims of (i) encouraging people to work to make the contributions needed to obtain contributory benefits, thereby reducing the stigma of claiming such benefits, (ii) simplifying the benefit system to reduce administrative cost and complexity, and (iii) ensuring greater certainty so that individuals understood what they were entitled to and were able to plan for their financial future, were legitimate and rationally connected to the imposition of that condition. In determining whether the condition was justified and struck the necessary fair balance between the rights of individuals affected by the measure and the interests of the community as a whole, the widest margin of appreciation was appropriate, because the condition was a measure in primary legislation which fell squarely in the social and economic sphere and involved policy choices made by Parliament about the allocation of scarce public resources. Moreover, the legislation had been relatively recently enacted, following a consultation in which the impact of the contribution condition on disabled people was expressly considered and the decision not to make an exception for people in the claimant’s situation was maintained. It was also significant that the measure was concerned with defining entitlement to a benefit as to which there was no general consensus or common standard about when or whether it should be paid. Accordingly, even accounting for the fact that the claimant’s discrimination case included disability as part of the grounds for the impugned treatment, requiring the contribution condition to be met without any relevant exception being made was reasonably and objectively justified (paras 109, 111–122, 128–134, 137–138, 152–153, 160).