EAT Unfair Dismissal – HUMAN RIGHTS – WORKING OUTSIDE THE JURISDICTION – An employee of a bank made allegations of financial malpractice, and was dismissed. He was Italian, and both lived and worked in Singapore. The contract under which he worked was subject to Singaporean law. The only connection his case had with the UK was that that was where the head office of the Bank was.
It was accepted that if his claim had been one of ‘ordinary’ unfair dismissal, the test to determine whether the ERA 1996 applied (extra-territorially) would be whether the Claimant’s employment had a sufficiently strong connection with Great Britain and with British employment law, and he could not meet it. It was argued however that where the claim was for the suffering of a detriment, or dismissal, on the grounds that the employee had made a public interest disclosure, a ‘looser’ test should apply, such as would permit the Claimant to rely on the protective provisions of the 1996 Act. An ET rejected this argument.
On appeal, it was submitted that the EJ was in error by failing to apply the principle in Bleuse v MBT, and had failed to consider what Parliament might reasonably be taken to have indicated should be the position. The right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by Art. 10 ECHR was part of UK Law not least because the EU Charter applied, and Art. 11 of it adopted Art. 10 ECHR; and this freedom involved not only a right to express but a right to listen, which in the case of a disclosure made abroad concerning a British bank therefore involved the rights of UK citizens to hear it.
The appeal was rejected. Bleuse did not apply, since neither the ECHR nor EU Law applied in Singapore; nor did the claim involve a directly effective right. There was no sufficient reason to treat the ERA as extending extra-territorially such that whistle-blowing detriments or dismissals fell within its scope whilst other dismissals did not. Parliament inserted the relevant provisions into the ERA 1996 at a time when all such rights were subject to an express geographic limitation: the implied limitation should be no different in the present case from that applied in Ravat.
Langstaff P J
[2014] UKEAT 0181 – 14 – 0512, [2015] ICR 436, [2015] IRLR 271
Bailii
Employment Rights Act 1996
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – BP Plc v Elstone and Another EAT 31-Mar-2010
EAT JURISDICTIONAL POINTS
VICTIMISATION DISCRIMINATION: Protected disclosure
The central question in this appeal was whether an employee/worker who complained of suffering a detriment from his current . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Updated: 24 December 2021; Ref: scu.539746