United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT


 


MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL QC

1. By a Notice of Appeal dated 18 February 2000 Mrs Pamela Baptiste sought to have set aside as erroneous in law the decision of the London South Employment Tribunal sitting on
   4 January 2000, embodied in Extended Reasons sent to the parties on 7 January 2000, rejecting her application for relief in respect of unfair dismissal and alleged race discrimination on the part of the Respondents: the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and on Mr Hughes, who was at the material time the Assistant High Commissioner at the British High Commission in St Lucia, where it is beyond dispute Mrs Baptiste worked at all material times for the purposes of these proceedings.
2. The appeal originally so lodged has not been pursued before the Appeal Tribunal. On 24 June 2000 the North Lambeth Law Centre, who had previously been acting for Mrs Baptiste, wrote to the Appeal Tribunal seeking a short adjournment of the appeal with a view to its being withdrawn in the light of other proceedings that were then proposed to be taken on behalf of Mrs Baptiste in St Lucia. Little more was then heard from Mrs Baptiste or anyone acting on her behalf and in due course the matter came before the Appeal Tribunal on 23 March 2001 when the President was presiding. A short judgment was delivered directing that Mrs Baptiste, the Appellant, should be given notice that the Preliminary Hearing of this appeal would be fixed to come on effectively before the Tribunal after a final opportunity had been given for her to appear and make submissions as to why the appeal should be allowed to go forward at all. The President's judgment and the order made by the Tribunal on 23 March 2001 directed that a letter should be written to her warning specifically that if she neither attended nor was represented at the Preliminary Hearing on the adjourned date to be fixed there was a real risk that her appeal would be struck out or dismissed without more ado.
3. That is the state in which the proceedings now come before us today, and again there is no appearance by or on behalf of Mrs Baptiste and nothing has been heard from her by way of response to the letter written on 16 July 2001 warning her that the proceedings would be coming again before the Appeal Tribunal on that basis.
4. In our judgment the decision of the Employment Tribunal, that it did not have jurisdiction to consider her two applications, was correct as a matter of law since, as all of her duties had been performed outside Great Britain in the High Commission and Consular premises in St Lucia, there was, under the law in force at that time, no jurisdiction for an Employment Tribunal to consider a complaint either of unfair dismissal or of race discrimination contrary to the Race Relations Act 1976.
5. In our judgment the Tribunal were correct in holding that the system of diplomatic immunity which protects Consular and High Commission premises does not operate to turn a High Commission or Consular office overseas into domestic territory of the United Kingdom for the purposes of United Kingdom law and in particular for the purposes of either the Employment Rights Act or the Race Relations Act.
6. The appeal which was based on the contrary contention that this was too narrow an interpretation of the legislation has not been pursued and no grounds have been put before us to demonstrate that that view taken by the Employment Tribunal was incorrect as a matter of law. In those circumstances we unanimously dismiss this appeal.