United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR N D HART (Solicitor) Messrs Slee Blackwell & Co Solicitors 10 Cross Street Barnstaple Devon EX31 1BA
For the Respondents	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF RESPONDENTS


 


MR JUSTICE CHARLES: This appeal comes before us today, the parties having earlier sent in correspondence indicating that they had reached an agreement. That agreement involved allowing the appeal and remission to a different Employment Tribunal. We therefore thought it appropriate that the matter should be considered by us today to ensure that we were satisfied that that was the correct order for this Tribunal to make.

1. The parties to the appeal are a Miss Pereira and the Respondent is a firm of Solicitors called Norton & Co. (and as we understand it a Peter Norton). The appeal is against a decision of the Employment Tribunal, the Extended Reasons for which were sent to the parties on 27 April 1998.
2. One part of that decision related to the date upon which Miss Pereira commenced employment. That is not the subject matter of this appeal. It affects her claim for unfair dismissal which was adjourned by the Employment Tribunal in accordance with the common practice, or standing direction, that now exists to await the outcome of the decision in the R v Secretary of State ex-parte Seymour-Smith and Perez. So that part of the claim stands adjourned.
3. The decision of the Tribunal, which is the subject of the appeal, is that the sex discrimination claim brought against both Respondents by the Applicant is dismissed.
4. We have seen a letter from the Respondents today which sets out what they say their reasons were for agreeing that this appeal should be allowed, and encloses the skeleton argument that they would have put before us had they sought to argue the appeal.
5. As this appeal is before us it appeared to this Tribunal, on the preliminary hearing, that it raised reasonably arguable points of law.
6. We have all read the papers over the weekend and have reached the conclusion, in the absence of seeing the skeleton argument put in by the Respondents, that absent some persuasive argument from the Respondents, all five grounds of appeal were good ones.
7. One of those grounds is that the Tribunal simply failed to consider the victimisation element of the claim. Having read the skeleton argument put in by the Respondents our views remain unchanged. The Respondents have consented to the appeal being allowed and remitted to a new Tribunal, that consent does not in any way bind us. We believe the correct approach is to consider the appeal on the basis that there are no submissions put forward by the Respondents orally.
8. Having considered the appeal on paper, we are satisfied that all five grounds should succeed and that the correct order is that the claims (by which we mean the claims under the Sex Discrimination Act which include claims for direct discrimination and victimisation) be remitted to a different Employment Tribunal for hearing.
9. There was a cross-appeal. The Respondents have indicated that they do not wish to proceed with that. To avoid any confusion we will simply dismiss the cross-appeal.