EAT RACE DISCRIMINATION
The Claimant appealed against a decision by an Employment Judge discharging a party from proceedings, on the grounds of apparent bias. An issue arose as to the authenticity of a document prepared by another party. One of the other parties was the Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland and Claimant submitted that:
‘the honourable learned judge in Scotland would resist accepting the possibility that the document of 3 August 2005 was a forgery; the implications of such a finding would have an adverse impact career and income-wise, because the third respondent, [was]chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for . . the honourable judge should and ought to have acknowledged the fact he was acting as judge in his own cause which he cannot do.’
No fair minded observer would regard the Employment Judge as having been acting in his own cause.
The Claimant drew attention to press reports in Scotland of a speech by Lord Hope reported in the Daily Herald in Scotland of 20 November 2011 who quoted remarks made to him by the late Lord about ‘a corrosive anti-English sentiment’ in the Scottish Courts system. The article is headed ‘Scottish court system is anti-English’.
Dr Singh submitted that he suffered from what he described as a ‘double-whammy’ in Scotland; firstly, he was a member of an ethnic minority, and, secondly, he speaks with a distinct English accent.
The background to the speech was that there is a vigorous debate taking place in Scotland as to the desirability of Scottish cases being decided by the Supreme Court in London, where the majority of Justices are English or from Northern Ireland. No fair-minded observer would conclude that Lord Hope was in any way suggesting that Scottish courts would be biased against English litigants. The Employment Appeal Tribunal regarded Dr Singh’s suggestion that he could not receive a fair hearing in the Scottish courts as being an unacceptable slur on the integrity of the Scottish judiciary and rejected the suggestion that he had not received a fair hearing.
Serota QC J
[2012] UKEAT 0006 – 11 – 1007
Bailii
England and Wales
Employment, Discrimination
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.462442
