United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MS I SIMLER (of Counsel) Engineering Employers Federation Broadway House Tothill Street London SW1H 9NQ
For the Respondent	MS S HUGHES (Solicitor) Principal Litigation Officer Commission for Racial Equality 3rd Floor Lancaster House 67 Newhall Street Birmingham B3 1NA


 


MR JUSTICE CHARLES: The parties to this appeal are Glendenning Plastics Ltd and Mr S. Lawrence. The company appeal the decision of the Employment Tribunal sitting in Birmingham who heard the case on 13 and 20 February 1998. The Extended Reasons were entered in the register on 3 April 1998.

The decision of the Employment Tribunal was a unanimous one and it was that the Applicant was dismissed for redundancy by the Respondents and such dismissal was unfair and secondly, the Applicant was subjected to racial discrimination by the Respondents. It is the second part of the decision that is the subject of this appeal.

We have had the benefit of a clear skeleton argument put in on behalf of the Respondents and also clear submissions made to us today by the same Counsel, Miss Simler, on their behalf, to whom we are grateful.

At the heart of the appeal is a consideration and assessment of the adequacy of the reasons given by the Tribunal. This is indeed shown by the note we have relating to the preliminary hearing which was that the reason for directing a full hearing was that the Tribunal's reasons for finding racial discrimination were arguably inadequate.

The approach to be taken to a consideration of the reasoning of Tribunals is helpfully gathered together in Harvey, paragraphs T 972 and following. There was unsurprisingly common ground between the parties as to the general approach and we note that in paragraph T 976 of Harvey it is said "It is obviously a matter of judgment how much detail will be required in a particular case to enable the parties and the appellate courts to know if there has been an error of law".

The essential issue for us is whether the Extended Reasons of the Tribunal make it clear that they found that the reason given by the Respondent company for selecting Mr Lawrence for redundancy was inadequate and unsatisfactory. That flows from the fourth point made in the King case.

Notwithstanding the submissions made on behalf of the company that this is not apparent from the Extended Reasons read as a whole and therefore they do not tell the company why they lost. In our judgment a fair reading of the Extended Reasons does indicate that the Tribunal approached the matter correctly by reference to, in particular, the King case and concluded that the reason given by the company, which they record in paragraph 2, was indeed inadequate and unsatisfactory. In our judgment this flows from paragraph 4 of the Extended Reasons where they conclude that it was not possible for them to justify any Polkey reduction and from all the sub-paragraphs in paragraph 5, because in some of them they reject points advanced on behalf of Mr Lawrence upon which an inference might be founded and in other sub-paragraphs they identify points upon which they have concluded that an inference of racial discrimination could properly be founded. In our judgment those factors are within the range of factors that a Tribunal could base such an inference upon.

The other matter which leads us to conclude that on a fair reading of the Extended Reasons the Tribunal found that the reason proffered by the employers was inadequate and unsatisfactory is their conclusion for the reasons that they give that an inference is to be drawn.

That final point could be attacked as this Tribunal "pulling itself up by its own bootstraps" because it has a circular element to it, but in our judgment when taken with the other factors we have mentioned, it is an additional point which we can, and have had regard to.

Accordingly, in our judgment, the reasoning contained in the Extended Reasons when read fairly against the background knowledge of the parties, does satisfy the duty of the Tribunal to inform the parties why they have won or why they have lost.

The other points raised in the skeleton argument and Notice of Appeal, in our judgment, stand or fall with the reading one gives to the Extended Reasons and, in our judgment, that was correctly accepted by Ms Simler when she agreed that the crucial point was the one we have identified earlier in this judgment.

Before ending this judgment we would also like to thank the representative of the Respondent for her skeleton argument which we also read.

For those reasons we dismiss this appeal.