United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED


 


MR RECORDER UNDERHILL QC

1. This is the preliminary hearing of an appeal against the decision of an Employment Tribunal in Liverpool dismissing the Appellant's claim for race discrimination.
2. The Appellant was at all material times employed by the trade union UNISON, the first Respondent. He is black. On 17 August 1999 he was informed that he had been suspended pending investigation of financial irregularities. He claims that the decision to investigate him and to suspend him constituted unlawful discrimination contrary to the Race Relations Act 1976. At the heart of his case appears to be a contention that other UNISON officials had been guilty of similar irregularities but were not investigated or suspended as he was.
3. In its Extended Reasons sent to the parties on 10 January 2001 the Tribunal rejected the Appellant's complaint. It held that the suspension and investigation of the Appellant were not motivated by any racial consideration on the part of the individuals in UNISON who were involved in the decisions which the Appellant seek to impugn. That is the effect of the findings at paragraphs 43 and 44 of the Reasons. The Tribunal expressly addressed the question whether the Appellant was in the same position as other UNISON officials and it held that he was not. In particular, the irregularities alleged against him concerned what purported to be claims for actual expenses whereas the practice on which the Appellant relied was the payment to other officials of what were described as honoraria which did not purport to be directly related to expenses.
4. The Tribunal's findings on these points were pure findings of fact. They are unchallengeable in this Tribunal unless the Appellant can show that they were findings which were not open to the Tribunal on the evidence. The Appellant has not submitted any skeleton argument nor has he appeared to argue this appeal. He has sent a letter to the Tribunal explaining that he was unable to attend because of a clash with examination dates. It appears that the background to this is that there has been a request for an adjournment but that has been apparently unsuccessful. The Appellant asks that we consider his case on basis of the notice of appeal.
5. The notice of appeal runs to 17 points. In the absence of the sort of assistance which we would expect to get from the Skeleton Argument and from oral explanation we do not feel able to deal with the 17 points on an item-by-item basis and are obliged to deal with them more generally. The broad point which applies as a whole is that they seek to re-open questions of fact decided by the Tribunal in relation to the issues which we have identified, without identifying any basis of law on which we could do so. Although there are assertions, such as at head 15, that the Tribunal was wrong to come to the findings of fact in question given the evidence in front of it, there is no claim that the Tribunal has made findings of fact for which there was no evidence. On the contrary, this appears to be a case where the Appellant merely does not agree with the conclusion which the Tribunal reached on the evidence which was before it. In those circumstances we dismiss this Appeal.