United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT


 


HER HONOUR JUDGE A WAKEFIELD

1. This is an ex parte preliminary hearing to determine whether the grounds in the Notice of Appeal put forward by Mr D Gavin raise a reasonably arguable point of law which should be determined at a full hearing. There was no appearance today by either party. This decision is therefore based on the documentation.
2. The appeal is against the dismissal by an Employment Tribunal in Manchester, sitting on 11 July 2000, of the Applicant's claim for compensation and reinstatement in consequence of alleged unfair dismissal. In extended reasons for the decision dated 6 October 2000 the Employment Tribunal makes clear that the circumstances of the dismissal were such that they would have found the Applicant to be entitled to a remedy were it not for the fact that they found that the contract of employment was so tainted by illegality as not to be capable of founding such a claim. The illegality identified by the Tribunal was an arrangement entered into between the Applicant and the Respondent as to the funding of a motor vehicle to be used by the Applicant in the course of the employment.
3. The Employment Tribunal found that the parties had deliberately and knowingly devised a scheme which was a fraud on the revenue. This fraud was, in the view of the Employment Tribunal, so fundamental to the contractual arrangements that the contract of employment was unenforceable for illegality.
4. In the first ground of appeal the Appellant asserts that the Employment Tribunal made an error of law in concluding that the arrangements for the financing of the vehicle were:

"Sufficient to taint the Appellant"

and to render the contract of employment unenforceable by way of an unfair dismissal claim. In our view this is an arguable point of law. There is clearly an important distinction between a contract of employment, the terms of which are legal, but which is, at least in part, to be performed illegally, and a contract of employment which, by its very terms, involves a serious illegality, such as a fraud on the revenue.