Victimisation
Major update of my Victimisation page, including:
- the 2024 Sexual harassment and harassment at work: technical guidance, which has a chapter on victimisation,
- Technical note with more detail on what is a “protected act”,
- Technical note on how far steps in conducting litigation can be victimisation.
As that page says, victimisation (s.27 EqA) is broadly where an employer or service provider etc treats someone badly because they did anything in connection with the Equality Act (EqA), eg made a claim under it. Being victimised because of one’s disability is not what the EqA calls victimisation – that is likely to be “harassment” (s26 EqA).
Jury service
Link to new STAMMA page Stammering and jury service (stamma.org), added to Appearing in court with a stammer?>Jury service.
Increased compensation from Rail Ombudsman
Ombudsmen are sometimes available to resolve equality complaints, as an alternative to going to court.
However the Rail Ombudsman was only awarding about £100 on average for assistance failures, less than a tenth of the minimum a court would likely award. This Ombudsman has now been persuaded to review its policy, and has made an award of £1,200: Activist’s ‘genius’ two-year plan opens door to more generous compensation for disabled rail passengers (disabilitynewsservice.com), January 2025.
See on my website Complaints and going to court: services>Rail Ombudsman: increased compensation based on Vento guidelines.
Employment Rights Bill
Some not very important updates to Third party harassment proposals for the 27th January 2025 version of the Bill, and committee debates in December. Other pages also updated for clause references in the revised Bill.
Ministry of Defence v Rubery
In Ministry of Defence v Rubery, 2024, the EAT held that s.121 Equality Act (EqA), requiring members of the armed forces to bring a service complaint before starting a tribunal claim under the EqA, was consistent with human rights law. Even if it had not been, the court could not have re-interpreted the EqA. The court also considered the effect of general principles of EU law up to the end of 2023.
S.121 EqA should not be relevant for disability discrimination, because the armed forces are excluded from at least most disability discrimination claims under the EqA employment provisions. However, the case is of some interest in discussing and applying the tests for how far human rights and (up to the end of 2023) EU law may – or here may not – override the wording of the EqA,
Effect of pre-2021 EU court decisions
Link to A bitter taste? When will the Court depart from assimilated EU case law? (eurelations.com), about the Court of Appeal decision in Thatchers Cider Co Ltd v Aldi Stores [2025] EWCA Civ 5, where the court decided not to depart from pre-2021 EU case law. This was not a case on the EqA. Linked from Brexit: Effect of EU law when interpreting Equality Act, from 2024>Supreme Court test, applied by higher courts to pre-2021 EU case law.
Also added reference to paragraph 24 of the government’s Assimilated Law Parliamentary Report: June 2024 to December 2024 (pdf, gov.uk), January 2025, on Retained EU Law Act 2023>S.6 no longer takes effect in October 2024.
Stripping out reasonable adjustments when identifying the PCP, in employment cases
Further cases added to Reasonable adjustment rules: employment>PCP is the general practice etc before adjustments are made.
- Previous updates Website updates November to December 2024.
