United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants: MR D LETHBRIDGE MR B JONES MR G BADDELEY MR J DOWNES (NO ATTENDANCE)	IN PERSON
For the Respondent	MISS S BOTHROYD (of Counsel) Instructed By: Messrs Dibb Lupton Alsop Solicitors Fountain Precinct Balm Green Sheffield S Yorkshire S1 1RZ


 


JUDGE H WILSON: This has been the full hearing of the appeal by the four Appellants, against the decision of the Employment Tribunal that it had no jurisdiction to hear the complaints brought by the Appellants against particularly, the Second Respondent, British Steel Plc. The Appellants have represented themselves today and British Steel has been represented by Miss Bothroyd who represented them at the original hearing.

1. The matter has had a chequered and confusing history. It came before the Employment Appeal Tribunal as a preliminary matter and the judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal was that the matter should proceed to full argument about whether or not the Employment Tribunal had dealt with the right question and/or reached the right conclusion concerning the matter of an inducement based on a false misrepresentation.
2. The Respondent relies on the same defence today, as set out in the appearances put in to the original applications, and adds that there was no relevant misrepresentation and that the claims are out of time.
3. The brief position is that the Appellants were employed by a firm called HH. Robertson, which was acquired by British Steel. British Steel has always denied, so far as the Appellants and the rest of the workforce is concerned, that the provisions of TUPE apply.
4. We know, although the Appellants did not at the material time, that for other purposes representatives of the respondent Company have asserted that those provisions do apply and that there has been a transfer of undertakings. However that might be, each of these Appellants signed COT 3s and the Respondent says that that deprives them of the right to come to the Employment Tribunal. Normally, of course, that would be the case but the Appellants claim that they signed the COT3s because they were induced to do so by the Respondent's assertion that the provisions of TUPE did not apply and they say that that was a false representation.
5. For the purposes of the trial before the Employment Tribunal Miss Bothroyd conceded that the representation that TUPE did not apply had been made and was false. We therefore turn to the question in paragraph 5 of the decision, having first of all considered the arguments advanced by the Appellants in their skeleton arguments and orally before us and by Miss Bothroyd in her skeleton argument as amplified today. In our judgment we find that the question posed in paragraph 5 of the decision of the Employment Tribunal is not the right question. The question should have been, whether the Appellants' decision to sign the COT3 was materially influenced by the admitted false representation that TUPE did not apply?
6. In those circumstances the answers given in paragraph 6 of the decision of the Employment Tribunal do not answer that question, but deal instead with a range of other factors which may or may not also have influenced the decision to sign the COT3.
7. We therefore consider that the matter should be remitted for rehearing by a differently constituted Tribunal, solely on the question whether the Appellants' decisions to sign the COT3s were materially influenced by the admitted false representation that TUPE provisions did not apply. The question of jurisdiction depends upon the answer to that question. In this connection we do not consider that in the light of the evidence we have heard, these applications could be categorised as frivolous or vexatious.