United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR MICHEL KALLIPETIS One of Her Majesty's Counsel Appearing under the Employment Law Appeal Advice Scheme


 


RECORDER LANGSTAFF QC:

1. Because Mr Kallipetis QC has represented Mr Bennett this morning the reasons which we shall give for refusing him permission to proceed with his appeal to a full hearing before this Tribunal can be short. His appeal is against a decision by the Chairman of the Manchester Tribunal in which she ordered on 14 March and promulgated to the parties on 17 March a decision that the originating application, which had been presented on 4 November 1999, should be struck out.
2. That originating application had raised two matters of complaint. The first sought to reopen an allegation of unfair dismissal, which has been canvassed on a number of occasions by Mr Bennett before the Employment Tribunal and before this Tribunal but has never come to a full hearing. Plainly, given the view that was expressed by this Tribunal by His Honour Judge Peter Clark, on 7 June 1999, that there were no grounds for reopening the circumstances in which Mr Bennett came to withdraw his complaint 10 years before hand, the chairman was right to think that there was no reasonable prospect of success on that ground.
3. There was however one new matter which was raised and that was that Mr Bennett had, he said, unsuccessfully applied for employment and complained that his applications had been rejected because of unfavourable references given by the respondent.
4. The Chairman had earlier written to the applicant and recites in her order of 14 March that the applicant was on 1 February warned that unless written reasons were given within 14 days as to why an order should not be made, the Tribunal would consider striking out the originating application as frivolous and vexatious. We have before us a letter dated 14 February, which is within the 14 days, which is date stamped as received by the Employment Tribunal at London North on 14 February 2000, in which Mr Bennett makes out reasons why his application should not be struck out. These reasons focus upon the claim in respect of a failure to give a favourable reference. He refers, without giving the name of the case, to a case which recently received considerable publicity. This is Coote v Granada Holdings in which following a claim of sex discrimination, Miss Coote was awarded a sum, reported in the press as amounting to some £200,000.
5. That claim was, however, for the refusal of a reference rather than for the giving of a wrong reference. Further it was based upon sex discrimination. The only claim which Mr Bennett could in fact advance, there being no allegation in his case of discrimination under any of the discrimination statues, was one based upon his contract of employment.
6. He did not in his letter of 14 February make out sufficient reasons which would satisfy a Tribunal that there was a viable claim, which fell within the jurisdiction of the Employment Tribunal. There are a number of reasons for that. Essentially there is no general contractual obligation to give a reference which is favourable. Secondly if there is any ground for a claim about a reference, it is that it is dishonestly provided and represents the facts as the employer does not believe them to be. In Mr Bennett's case, by reason of the history of the matter, it would seem that the view which the Public Trustee Office took of him, which might be expressed in a reference, was not one which was necessarily fell foul of that. In any event this could not be litigated as arising upon, or being out-standing at the termination of the contract, which is the limit of an Employment Tribunal's jurisdiction in this area. Tribunals work under statute which limits the claims that they may determine. The Chairman was in our view right to think that there was no jurisdiction in the Employment Tribunal to consider Mr Bennett's complaint.
7. It is a matter of regret that the Chairman did not express in her order of 14 March what she was later to say by letter of 12 April, which is that she had received and taken into consideration the matters in the letter of 14 February. It is perhaps also a matter of some regret that she did not explain in a little more detail the substance of her reasons for thinking that there was not anything in the letter of February, which might give Mr Bennett a case that the Employment Tribunal was entitled in law to hear. It is thus perhaps understandable that Mr Bennett should have pursued his bewilderment to this Tribunal. We feel sure that with the assistance of Mr Kallipetis, and we hope with the remarks which we have made, he will now understand why it was that the Tribunal could not have gone on to hear his complaint and that we therefore have no option but to uphold the decision of the Tribunal, all be it on grounds rather more fully expressed.