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05 February 2020 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7873 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Employment law brief: 5 February 2020

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Sent packing? Ian Smith says there’s life after Brexit for unfair dismissal claims
  • Unfair dismissal & human rights.
  • Reasonable investigation in general and investigatory hearings.
  • Applying the correct test for contributory fault.

At the end of a month that culminated with our departure from the EU at the macro end of the scale, it is perhaps comforting that, not only does life go on but, at the micro end, the case law during it has concentrated on some of the eternal verities of the almost immutable law of unfair dismissal, which has been with us since the Industrial Relations Act 1971 and has suffered since then from remarkably little change in the basic legislation.

Unfair dismissal & human rights

The key point in Q v Secretary of State for Justice UKEAT/0120/19before Judge Auerbach is the affirmation of the approach taken by the Court of Appeal in Turner v East Midlands Trains Ltd [2012] EWCA Civ 1470 , [2013] IRLR 107, [2013] 3 All ER 375 that the range of reasonable responses test for unfair dismissal is

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