Ian Smith spills the beans on employee inducements, whistleblowing judges & why pre-termination talks may not always be confidential
- Direct dealings with employees when a union says ‘No’.
- An exception to the confidentiality of pre-termination talks.
- A judge is not a ‘worker’ for whistleblowing purposes.
The three cases chosen to kick off 2018 for this column (reported during the pre-Christmas judicial clearance sale) may at first seem rather esoteric, but in the first there was a need to consider for the first time the meaning of a statutory change effected in 2004, in the second there was established a (first?) case law exception to a statutory rule on confidentiality enacted in 2013, and in the third some complex legal issues arose relating to domestic and human rights law in answering a seemingly simple question—is a judge a ‘worker’ for the purposes of a whistleblowing complaint? The first two decisions are important clarifications on novel points; the third one (a lengthy exposition by Underhill LJ) for all its complexity and comprehensive coverage may yet end up being re-argued later this
