Roberts v. National Union of Journalists [2001] UKEAT 941_01_0609 (6 September 2001)

JUDGMENT INTERLOCUTORY HEARING © Copyright 2001 APPEARANCES For the Appellant No appearance or representation by or on behalf of the Appellant For the Respondent MR GALBRAITH-MARTIN (of Counsel) Instructed by: Messrs Thompsons Solicitors Congress House Great Russell Street London WC1B 3LW MR RECORDER LANGSTAFF QC This is an interlocutory appeal from an Order made by the Employment Tribunal dated 31 st July 2001. This Order was made in the course of a complaint by the Appellant about unjustifiable discipline. In his application to the Tribunal, the Appellant complains about suspension from membership following a disciplinary hearing internal to the Union of which he was a member. By his Notice of Appeal, the Appellant raises two principal matters. The first is venue. His application has been ordered to be heard in London. The Appellant would prefer it to be heard in Merseyside. However, the Order as to venue was made before the end of June 2000. The appeal against that Order is therefore out of time. No application has been made to extend time on paper. Today, the Appellant has chosen not to be present. Accordingly, we considered whether it would be proper to extend time. If an application had been made to extend the time for appealing, we would not have acceded to it. The hearing of the matter is listed for October. If we were to allow the appeal on this point it would inevitably involve further delay. Thus this appeal, so far as it relates to any issue of venue, must be dismissed. We turn to the Order made on 31 st July. By that Order, the Appellant was required to send to the Respondent a list of such documents as were specified in the Schedule to the Order as were or had been in his possession, custody or power and to send a copy of the list to the office of the Employment Tribunals. The Schedule, to which the Order refers, in turn refers to a fax of 30 th July. That fax seeks "all documents material to any issue". The Appellant says that all documents that he intends to rely upon had been passed to the Employment Tribunal. He also complains that the trade union was late in providing a list of documents to him, and that it provided only a list and not copies of the documents. It may be that there is a misunderstanding on the part of the Appellant. He may have thought that all he was required to disclose were those documents upon which he intended to rely. The category of documents that he had to disclose were, however, wider than that: all documents that are relevant. That includes documents which he might not wish to rely upon, but which on any reasonable view related to the issues in dispute. Any appeal must raise an issue of law if this Tribunal is to have jurisdiction to deal with it. The question raised here is whether or not the Employment Tribunal had jurisdiction to make the Interlocutory Order it did. The power it has to make such an Order as it did is a discretionary one. In order to be able to set the judgment aside, we have to find some error in the exercise of that discretion. We can find none. The Appellant argues that there was here an overriding error of law, in that there was a failure to observe the provisions of Articles 6 and 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Essentially, he is complaining that there was unfairness in the Order, a lack of even-handedness, and a discrimination against him in the circumstances. We do not see that the exercise of discretion by the Tribunal was unfair, within Article 6 whether read with Article 14 or at all. We think that the human rights points are not relevant to the exercise of the discretion by this Employment Tribunal. No other substantial ground was argued on paper by the Appellant in support of his appeal to us. We did, however, give anxious consideration to whether or not we should in the exercise of our powers extend the Appellant's time for compliance with the Order to which he is subject. We have come to the conclusion that the sensible course is that if the Appellant wishes more time in order to comply with the Order he must ask the Employment Tribunal to extend time. We thus decline to exercise our own jurisdiction in the matter. Finally, the Appellant complains of the late delivery of a Skeleton Argument from the Respondent. We asked Mr Galbraith-Marten, who appears for the Respondent, for an explanation. It appears there was a regrettable lapse on the part of the Respondent. However, it is plain that the Appellant has received and seen the Skeleton, and did so with sufficient time to respond to us. He does not therefore appear to us to have suffered any prejudice. We note that his own Skeleton was received somewhat late. Accordingly, we think that there is no force in his complaint about late receipt of the Respondent's Skeleton, although (because he has not been present) we have investigated it. It follows that the appeal must be dismissed. The Respondents made an application for costs on the basis that the conduct of the Appellant was unreasonable, unnecessary and vexatious. We concluded, after hearing what Mr Galbraith-Marten had to say, that we should refuse that application. We direct that any application for leave to appeal should be made direct to the Court of Appeal within 14 days of the date the judgment is sent to the parties (we, ourselves, do not think there are any grounds here upon which permission to appeal should be granted). Finally, it should be recorded that this judgment has been written some 7 weeks after the hearing to which it related. It is an attempt to record what was said extempore by the Tribunal on the day of the hearing. Because of a failure of the recording device, we have endeavoured to reconstruct the judgment from recollection, aided by the notes taken by Mr Galbraith-Marten, and those in the Judge's notebook. 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