Focus on: Age Discrimination
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has confirmed, in Lloyd-Briden -v- Worthing College, that a tribunal is not obliged to disregard section 109 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) on the basis that it contravened the fundamental rights and general principles of EC law.
Until 1 October 2006, section 109 ERA barred people over 65 from claiming unfair dismissal. Accordingly, the case over-rules the theory instigated by the ECJ decision in Mangold -v- Helm that a court or tribunal would be obliged to ignore age-discriminatory provisions in a claim based on facts occurring before the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 came into force on 1 October 2006.
Mr Lloyd-Briden was dismissed from his role as a cleaner at the college in January 2006, at which point he was 82 years old. An employment tribunal struck out his claim form for unfair dismissal on the basis that he was barred from making the claim by virtue of section 109 ERA. Mr Lloyd-Briden appealed to the EAT, contending that the tribunal should have disregarded section 109 on the basis that it was in contravention of a fundamental principle of EC law; namely discrimination on the grounds of age.
Dismissing the appeal, the EAT accepted that Mangold -v- Helm established that “the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of age is to be regarded as a general principle of community law such that, in certain circumstances, a national court may be required to set aside any provision of national law which conflicts with that general principle”. However, these circumstances were limited to cases where, as happened in Mangold, the member state has introduced an age-discriminatory law after the date on which the Equal Treatment Framework Directive (from which the age discrimination laws emanate) was adopted (i.e. 27 November 2000). Section 109 ERA predated the directive, with the result that the tribunal was not obliged to disregard it or set it aside.
An important case and one which should re-assure employers!
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