Ian Smith provides an update from
the courts
Of the four cases considered in this column this month, three concern general principles of employment law—the right (or otherwise) to legal representation at a disciplinary hearing, the “effective date of termination” in a case of dismissal without notice and how equal pay claims and the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) fit together. As will be seen, these topics are united by the fact that they have exercised the minds (and sometimes the patience) of employment lawyers over many years. Indeed, it is argued that the real problem behind the third one (equal pay and TUPE) is that both of these areas are, in employment law terms, so old, but historically were never designed to fit together. By contrast, the fourth case concerned a pure question of statutory interpretation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, revolving around a word that sounds perfectly normal and innocuous but had proved to be neither in the hitherto-inconsistent case law.
A right to legal representation ?
Earlier this year we saw the first instance decision in R (on
