United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT IN PERSON


 


MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL QC

1. In this appeal which is before us today for a preliminary hearing, Mr James Alfred Featherstone seeks to have set aside as erroneous in law the procedural decision of the Chairman of the Employment Tribunal sitting at Liverpool on 5^th October 2001 embodied in the decision and the Extended Reasons sent to the parties on 15^th October 2001 and set out on pages 16-20 of our appeal file.
2. The proceedings before the Tribunal on that day were proceedings originally launched as long ago as 18^th April 1993 by Mr Featherstone against two Respondents, the St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council and St Helens College of Further Education, to whom on the Originating Application he had initially added the Secretary of State for Education as a third Respondent. His complaint was of unfair dismissal by selection for compulsory redundancy on what, he asserted, was a transfer of undertaking under the changes taking place to further education involving the transfer of some part of the Borough Council's education functions to St Helen's College in March and April 1993. The Originating Application also alleged that Mr Featherstone was a registered disabled person and we have papers in the appeal file confirming that he is, or has been, in receipt of industrial disablement benefit.
3. We do not need to say anything more about the merits of the rival arguments in the Tribunal proceedings themselves because the appeal before us concerns only the procedural directions given by the Chairman following the hearing on 5^th October 2001. That hearing was to consider an application by Mr Featherstone that there should be an indefinite stay of his proceedings against the two St Helens entities for reasons which he explained to the Tribunal Chairman.
4. That application was refused and the Chairman proceeded to give directions for these long outstanding proceedings to be brought to a hearing and conclusion. The detailed directions for bringing on the proceedings were for the delivery of statements of issues, provision for copies of documents, mutual exchange of witness statements by 12^th February 2002, concluding by recording that the hearing date was fixed for 5^th March 2002 and the next four days. That is the position, as we understand it, as of today as well.
5. The reasons for refusing Mr Featherstone's application for a stay appear from the Tribunal Chairman's statement of Extended Reasons in which, among other things, paragraph 5 records that

"The Applicant read from and then handed in two documents in support of his request for a stay, the discernible grounds of which are summarised as follows

1) His Honour Judge Sedley giving directions at a hearing in respect of judicial review proceedings directed that matters in this case be co-ordinated by the Treasury solicitor which apparently has not been done

2) The Employment Tribunal proceedings are an interruption and/or interference with the preparation of documents for the Secretary of State for Social Security in respect of the Applicant's contention that his industrial injury has been aggravated by the first Respondent and the preparation of information on criminal matters for the attention of the Attorney-General. It seems that the Applicant contends that his medical condition was aggravated by his exposure to benzine for which he holds the first Respondent liable

3) The first Respondent is deliberately failing to disclose material documents concerning dangerous chemical substances which are required by the Applicant's consultant haematologist and these proceedings should not continue until they have been disclosed

4) The Employment Tribunal cannot provide an appropriate remedy or solution"

6. On that basis the Chairman expressed his reason for declining to grant the indefinite stay requested by saying that no satisfactory grounds had been advanced by the Applicant for staying the proceedings. He was not satisfied that the other proceedings to which Mr Featherstone had referred had anything to do with the matters in issue before the Employment Tribunal or that the documents Mr Featherstone was still seeking to obtain were relevant to any of the material issues in the present case and he recorded that the Applicant was unable to advance any cogent reason that they were.
7. He continued in paragraph 6.5

"This case was presented eight and a half years ago. If it is not heard soon it will not be possible for there to be a fair trial. The Respondents believe that all material documents are in existence and that there is only one material witness, the Personnel Officer from the first Respondent who has now retired. It is to be noted that the Applicant will reach retirement age later this year and that the remedy sought is reinstatement".

He accordingly dismissed the application for a stay and gave the directions to which we have made brief reference to enable the proceedings to be brought on for a hearing and determination.

8. Against that decision Mr Featherstone seeks to appeal, on grounds set out in his Notice of Appeal dated 11^th November 2001 and annexed documents at pages 1-15 of the appeal file before us, making a large number of points by reference to allegations that the Chairman had committed an offence under the European Communities Act 1972 and a contempt of the High Court in seeking to advance the Employment Tribunal proceedings. In Mr Featherstone's contention, that was contrary to what he was seeking to pursue in proceedings for judicial review which, it appears, had on some occasion come before Sedley LJ when some remarks had been made by him.
9. He further questioned the independence of the Employment Tribunal and said that the decision was a misrepresentation of events and that the directions given denied his right to take proceedings he wishes to advance before the European Court of Justice. Those contentions have been amplified in further written documents submitted to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and by Mr Featherstone himself who has appeared before this morning and made oral submissions by reference to a prepared written document and otherwise.
10. We have considered all of the contentions he seeks to advance but we have not been satisfied that any of them provides any arguable ground for allowing this appeal to go forward to a full hearing before the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Under Rule 15 of the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure Regulations 2001 SI/1171 it is for the Employment Tribunal to regulate its own procedure and it is well established that matters such as the setting down of cases for hearing and whether a stay should be granted are matters for the judicial discretion of the Tribunal itself with which the Appeal Tribunal will not interfere unless some error of law in the Tribunal's decision is shown.
11. In the present case the Employment Tribunal Chairman's decision that the Applicant had failed to show any valid reason to justify the stay he was seeking was, in our judgment, an entirely proper and correct one. He reached, in our view, the only decision that any reasonable Tribunal could have done in the light of the way the matter had been put before him. Mr Featherstone's submissions in his Notice of Appeal and in his later arguments have not persuaded us otherwise. For those reasons we now, therefore, unanimously dismiss this appeal.