United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

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


 


JUDGE P COLLINS CBE:

1. This is an appeal against the decision of the Employment Tribunal in Truro. On 14 June 2000 the tribunal gave its reasons for refusing the appellant's application for a review of the decision which had been made that the respondent was unfairly dismissed and an award to her of an amount which is not clear from the papers before us.
2. The appellant has not attended today, nor has she given any explanation as to why she has not attended, nor have the officers of the tribunal been able to make any contact with her today at any of the telephone numbers which the tribunal has for her, nor to establish why she has not attended. Essentially, the ground of her appeal is this:

"Sufficient new evidence was submitted to the tribunal for review but was not considered because the office lost the papers. They then said they were 'unlikely' to have been submitted. This is not true and is a violation of my rights to appeal."

3. The chairman had refused the review on the ground that the application to review was outside the time limit of 14 days and it was unlikely that any earlier letter asking for a review had been sent, notwithstanding the appellant's contention that it had. There is also a view expressed that the proposed new evidence is not relevant but I think there is a more substantial and obvious ground for refusing a review on the ground of fresh evidence.
4. The evidence sought to be brought in, although we have not got a copy of it, is the evidence of a Mrs Rogers. Mrs Rogers is, and so far as we know was at all material times, employed by the appellant and so there was every reason why the appellant could have called her at the hearing if she had relevant evidence to give. That being said, Mrs Rogers sent a fax to the tribunal on 19 July and, although she asked for it to be kept confidential, I do not think there is any basis on which the tribunal is entitled to keep confidential from one party a communication from some other interested person.
5. Mrs Rogers said in her letter that she was unwilling to give evidence and would not wish her statement produced in evidence. I ought to say that she asked for it to be kept confidential because it would cause a difficult atmosphere at work if it was known. The appellant should be well aware that any discriminatory action against Mrs Rogers arising out of her unwillingness to give evidence would be likely to attract action of its own and she may well wish to reflect on the fact that our principal reason for our decision is not because Mrs Rogers wished to withdraw her evidence but because we take the view that if Mrs Rogers' evidence was relevant, it should have been addressed at the original hearing. At paragraph 6 of the bundle we are told that the appellant was unable to use Mrs Rogers' information at the time because of Mrs Rogers' mental state but we have no medical evidence which supports any suggestion that Mrs Rogers was not able to give evidence.
6. For those reasons we consider there is no arguable point of law in this appeal and we dismiss it.