United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

BAILII case number: [1995] UKEAT 595_95_2007

Appeal No. EAT/595/95

EMPOLYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

At the Tribunal

On 20 July 1995

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE TUCKEY

MR J R CROSBY

MS D WARWICK

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DR A REZA          APPELLANT

(1) The General Medical Council

(2) Greenwich & Bexley FHSA          RESPONDENTS

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Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

INTERLOCUTORY HEARING

Revised


 


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APPEARANCES

For the Appellant IN PERSON

For the First Respondents MR A MCCULLOUGH

(of Counsel)

Messrs Le Brassieur J Tickle

Solicitors

Drury House

34-43 Russell Street

London

WC2B 5HM

For the Second Respondents

MR R RUNDELL

(of Counsel)

Messrs Field Fisher Waterhouse

Solicitors

41 Vine Street

London

EC3N 2AA


 


MR JUSTICE TUCKEY: By a decision which was entered in the register on 3 May 1995 the Industrial Tribunal made two interlocutory orders.

Firstly, they ordered that the Applicant Dr Reza's claim, against the Second Respondents, the Greenwich & Bexley FHSA, be dismissed. Secondly, they ordered that the claim against the First Respondents, The General Medical Council should be restricted to an issue as to whether, at a hearing on 25 July 1994 they had racially discriminated against the Applicant.

Dr Reza has appealed against the first order. The first point we have to decide is whether this hearing should be adjourned.

Dr Reza tells us that his former Solicitors applied for legal aid for this appeal. Legal aid has been refused. He has now consulted other Solicitors who say they need further time to consider the papers and will then apply for legal aid again on his behalf. The prospect of this being successful seems to us to be remote since if the Legal Aid Authority has refused legal aid once, it is reasonable to assume that they will also refuse it second time round.

But, we have not confined our consideration to the application for an adjournment to this. We have, with Dr Reza's assistance, explored whether there are any possible grounds of appeal here. We should say at the outset that we have decided that there are not.

To explain why, it is necessary to refer very shortly to the history of this matter. Dr Reza was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council's Professional Conduct Committee on 12 March 1990. They ordered that his name should be suspended from the Medical Register. As a result the Health Authority removed his name from the Medical List.

Dr Reza appealed to the Privy Council who dismissed his appeal. Since then, he has made two applications to the GMC to restore his name to the register, both of which have been refused. The last of those was on 25 July 1994 and it is out of those proceedings that this complaint to the Industrial Tribunal arises.

There is apparently, no appeal from the refusal of the GMC to restore a name to the register. Dr Reza told us that this is why he made his complaint to the Industrial Tribunal. He alleges that the decision was taken for racial reasons and therefore, the GMC discriminated against him; the Health Authority aided that unlawful decision (Section 33 of the Race Relations Act 1976) alternatively, they unfairly dismissed him.

The basis for the unfair dismissal claim is tortuous. In the end Dr Reza accepted that it was nonsense, but shortly what he was saying was that the GMC's decision that he could not be restored to the Medical Register meant that he could not be employed by this (or any other) Health Authority, there was a dismissal.

The Industrial Tribunal went through procedures in accordance with their rules to try and clarify the allegations which Dr Reza was making. Among other things they asked for details as to how it was alleged that the Health Authority had aided the General Medical Council in its decision. Apart from repeating his case that he was not guilty of serious professional misconduct back in 1990, it appears that Dr Reza was unable to point to any involvement by the Health Authority with the decision made on 25 July 1994. We cannot see how they could have been involved.

So having invited Dr Reza to give details of this complaint when those details were not forthcoming, the Tribunal decided that the discrimination claim against the Health Authority should be dismissed, because it was vexatious and frivolous.

As to the claim for unfair dismissal, it was nonsense and there was nothing to justify it being considered further by the Tribunal. So the whole of the complaint against the Health Authority was dismissed.

We can see no conceivable grounds upon which Dr Reza can raise, with legal assistance, or otherwise, any point of law for consideration of this appeal Tribunal as to why the Industrial Tribunal's decision was wrong. Therefore, this appeal is bound to fail. It would be doing no service to Dr Reza or anyone else, to adjourn it to allow a lawyer to look at it. Any lawyer worth his salt would reach the same conclusion.

For these reasons this appeal is dismissed.