THE fight to win equality in benefits payments for widowers, which could relieve hardship for several West Devon men, went to the High Court in London last week.

Widowers from West Devon are among around 500 across the country being represented in the test case against the Government's refusal to recognise their call for equal treatment.

They say the European Commission on Human Rights, which came into force in October last year, protects their legal right to equality with widows in benefits entitlement.

In April this year, the Welfare and Pensions Act made the new bereavement benefit payable equally to men and women. But those widowed before the act came into force currently get nothing.

One of the first men in West Devon to start legal action over equal entitlement was Lionel Turk, 65, of Horrabridge, whose wife died in 1997, aged 60.

Mr Turk described the HIgh Court case as a 'battle of principle'.

'A widower has the same loss, the same emptiness and loneliness, as a widow who loses her husband. What is different with a man?', he said.

Barrister Geoffrey Cox, who is also Conservative spokesman for West Devon and Torridge, has been representing the widowers throughout their claims for entitlement to their late wives' National Insurance contributions.

He said: 'The Government has pursued an obstructive course from day one to these widowers.'

Mr Cox said while the Government was fighting widowers' claims for back-payments under the English legal system, it had already settled with a number of claimants threatening to bring the issue before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

He said he believed the Government intended to deter many widowers from pursuing their rights, by making it as difficult as possible to enforce them, in order to save money for the Treasury in potential compensation claims.

'It is not a particularly edifying approach from a government that professes to be in favour of human rights and brought in the Human Rights Act to ensure they could be more easily and fairly vindicated.

'It seems that the moment the interests of the Treasury and individual rights conflict, human rights go out the window.'

Mr Cox said most of the widowers who brought the judicial review were in great need of benefits, being mainly single fathers with a young family to support or elderly men no longer in employment.

Claimants were not only complaining on behalf of themselves, but also their working wives whose contribution to the National Insurance scheme had not provided the same protection for their families as those of their husbands.

'The Government has said this is perhaps the biggest challenge to the Human Rights Act it has faced,' added Mr Cox.

He said the Government had conceded during the case that human rights under the convention had been violated in some respects, but argued on a technical point that the court did not have the legal power to compensate the widowers.

Lawyers representing the widowers asked the judge for a formal declaration that the Government's failure to make payments equivalent to the widows' benefits was a breach of the human rights convention.

Mr Cox said it was possible the case could be sent to the House of Lords and ultimately Europe.

A judgement on the case is not anticipated for another month.