United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

Appeal No. UKEAT/0219/10/DM

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

                                                                                                                At the Tribunal

                                                                                                                On 14 July 2010

Before

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE KEITH

MR M CLANCY

MRS D PALMER

MS HAYLEY ANNE MOORE                                                                              APPELLANT

THE PRESIDENT OF THE METHODIST CONFERENCE                              RESPONDENT

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING – APPELLANT ONLY

                                              APPEARANCES

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE KEITH

1.            In The President of the Methodist Conference v Parfitt [1984] IRLR 176, the Court of Appeal decided that a minister in Full Connection with the Methodist Church was not employed under a contract of employment.  The spiritual nature of the minister's functions, the act of ordination and the doctrinal standards of the Methodist Church were all said to be inconsistent with the idea of “service” under a contract of employment.  The minister was a servant of God, pursuing God's calling.  In any event, even if there was a contract between the minister and the President of the Methodist Conference, and a contract of employment at that, it was unenforceable because there was no intention to create legal relations.

2.            The Claimant, Hayley Anne Moore, is an ordained minister in Full Connection of the Methodist Church.  The question in her case is whether she had the right not to be unfairly dismissed.  That depends upon whether she had entered or worked under a contract of employment: see section 230(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996.  The Court of Appeal’s decision in Parfitt is decisive of the case against her, unless either it is distinguishable on the facts, or any of its reasoning no longer applies, or changes to “The Constitutional Practice and Discipline of the Methodist Church”, which is the book containing the Standing Orders, Deed of Union and other seminal documents of the Methodist Church, have undermined the basis of the decision in Parfitt.

3.            It should be noted that many features of Ms Moore's association with the Methodist Church have the conventional hallmarks of employment.  She received a salary, though it was a called stipend.  She was provided with accommodation, though it was called a mance, and she was given a pension.  She was entitled to holiday pay and sick pay.  She received payslips which included an “employee reference number” and which recorded the tax and national insurance contributions deducted from her stipend.  She received a P60 at the end of the tax year, and was required to identify what benefits she had received for tax purposes.  She was subject to disciplinary action.  She was required to complete at least one appraisal of her own performance every year, and stewards had to inform her of any concerns about her performance.  Some but by no means all of these factors were referred to in Parfitt, and these were the sort of factors regarded by the House of Lords in Percy v Church of Scotland Board of National Mission [2006] IRLR 195, which was a case about a minister of the Church of Scotland, as tending to give rise to legally binding obligations such as to make the minister an employee for the purposes of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which admittedly contained a wider definition of “employment” than that in section 230(1) of the Employment Relations Act 1996.  But importantly Lord Nichols in that case thought that the time had come to recognise that employment arrangements between a church and its ministers should not lightly be taken as intended to have no legal effect, thereby doubting the application of one of the underlying principles which underpinned the reasoning in Parfitt. 

4.            All in all, we think that the grounds of appeal are sufficiently arguable to justify this appeal proceeding to a full hearing on all grounds.