EAT National Security – An immigration officer, C employed by the Home Office was suspended, his security clearance withdrawn, and then dismissed, all without any reason being given to him. He claimed it was because of discrimination against him on the grounds of race/religion. Rule 54 (National Security) was held to apply, and C was excluded from participation in closed proceedings, though there was a Special Advocate appointed on his behalf. C’s application for orders to address the lack of substantive disclosure to him was rejected. He appealed, contending that since the Supreme Court decision in Tariq v Home Office the CJEU had decided in ZZ that at the very least a minimum gist of the case against C should have been disclosed openly. That submission was rejected: the authority of Tariq was unaffected by ZZ since the factual contexts within which each decision was made were very different, as the Court of Appeal decision made when ZZ resumed for hearing before it made clear. The EJ had (contrary to C’s submissions) considered the particular facts of the case before striking the balance he did between the public interest in national security and the private interest of C in obtaining the means to fight his case effectively. He was not (contrary to C’s submissions) required to apply a principle that it might be preferable to strike the claim out rather than provide for a necessarily inadequately fair hearing, nor in error in failing to provide for all the issues relating to the admissibility of evidence, closed or open, to be resolved prior to the substantive hearing.
The appeal was dismissed.
Langstaff P J
[2014] UKEAT 0009 – 14 – 2111, [2015] ICR 418
Bailii
Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure 2004 54
England and Wales
Cited by:
Appeal from – Kiani v The Secretary of State for The Home Department CA 21-Jul-2015
Lord Dyson MR (with whom Richards LJ and Lewison LJ agreed) held that the requirements of article 6 ‘depend on context and all the circumstances of the case’. The court will strike an appropriate balance between the requirements of national security . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, Discrimination
Updated: 24 December 2021; Ref: scu.539303
