Mr B Price v Powys County Council UKEAT/0133/20/LA (V)
In this case, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) confirmed that an employer's decision to offer enhanced adoption pay but only statutory shared parental pay was not direct sex discrimination.
The Claimant in the case had decided against taking shared parental leave when he discovered that he would only receive statutory shared parental pay for his time out of the office. The Claimant's employer had a policy of paying enhanced maternity pay and enhanced adoption pay but only statutory shared parental pay.
The Claimant alleged that this was discriminatory and argued that the purpose of both adoption leave and shared parental leave was the facilitation of childcare. This argument was rejected by the EAT which held that there were material differences between the two types of leave which meant that the Claimant could not compare himself to a woman on adoption leave and that a more appropriate comparator would be a woman on shared parental leave. As a woman on shared parental leave would receive the same pay as a man on shared parental leave, there was no case of discrimination and the Claimant's appeal was dismissed.
This is in line with the decision in Ali v Capita Customer Management Ltd [2019] EWCA Civ 900 where the Court of Appeal held that it was not directly discriminatory for an employer to offer enhanced maternity pay but no enhanced shared parental pay as the circumstances between a man taking shared parental leave and a woman taking maternity leave were materially different.
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