"The statutory procedure requires the employer to inform the employee in writing of the grounds that have led the employer to contemplate dismissing the employee, to inform him of the basis of those grounds, and then when the employee has had reasonable time to consider that information to hold a meeting with him to discuss the matter and thereafter to make a decision on whether to dismiss the employee. In the present case, [Mr Wardle] was suddenly called into a meeting and was told that he was being dismissed immediately. There was no step one letter and no step two meeting to discuss matters before reaching a decision. The meeting that took place was to inform [Mr Wardle] of a fait accompli , it was not a step two meeting. The [bank] is a large employer with huge resources available to it. It knew what the procedures were; it made a conscious and deliberate decision to ignore them. There was no good reason why the procedure could not have been followed."
"It is a matter of common sense that the dismissal, which came suddenly and out of the blue and which [Mr Wardle] rightly felt was attributable to his complaints of race discrimination, would have caused worry, anxiety, hurt and anger. Although there was not a campaign of harassment or discrimination over a prolonged period of time, these were two serious acts of discrimination. The dismissal was the more serious because it suddenly deprived [Mr Wardle] of his livelihood and was done as an act of retaliation because [Mr Wardle] had exercised his legal right to bring proceedings for race discrimination. In our view this case fell within the middle band as identified in Vento v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police . We also concluded that the dismissal of [Mr Wardle] in those circumstances was high-handed, malicious and oppressive, and that any award that we make should contain an element of aggravated damages." (Emphasis supplied)
"69. … The task [of the employment tribunal] is to put the employee in the position he would have been in had there been no discrimination; that is not necessarily the same as asking what would have happened to the particular employment relationship had there been no discrimination. The reason is that the features of the labour market are not necessarily equivalent in the two cases. The fact that there has been a discriminatory dismissal means that the employee is on the labour market at a time and in circumstances which are not of his own choosing. It does not follow therefore that his prospects of obtaining a new job are the same as they would have been had he stayed at Abbey. For a start, it is generally easier to obtain employment from a current job than from the status of being unemployed. Further, it may be that the labour market is more difficult in one case compared with another. For example, jobs may be particularly difficult to obtain at the time of dismissal and yet by the time they become more plentiful, when in the usual course of events Mr Chagger might have been expected to have changed jobs had he remained with Abbey, he would have been out of a job and out of the industry for such a period that potential employers will be reluctant to employ him. In addition, he may have been stigmatised by taking proceedings, and that may have some effect on his chances of obtaining future employment. 70. The result of these factors is that the discriminatory dismissal does not only shorten what would otherwise have been Mr Chagger's period of employment with Abbey; it also alters the subsequent career path that might otherwise have been pursued. 71. It follows that, in our judgment, the period during which Mr Chagger would have remained in employment with Abbey had there been no discrimination is irrelevant given that this is a case where he would only leave for another job. The employment tribunal concluded that Mr Chagger would not have left Abbey unless and until he was able to move to a post at least as favourable as his Abbey job. In our view that is a wholly realistic assumption; few employees voluntarily leave employment for a worse paid job. We are not sure that Abbey were contending otherwise. 72. On the facts as found by the tribunal, the proper assessment of loss is therefore to be determined by asking when Mr Chagger might expect to obtain another job on an equivalent salary to his Abbey salary. His loss is fixed by that period. Whether that is shorter than the period he would have served with Abbey, or whether it is longer and includes time when, but for the discriminatory dismissal, he would have been employed elsewhere, is immaterial." (Emphasis supplied)
"The question is not whether the tribunal can predict with confidence all that would have occurred; rather it is whether it can make any assessment with sufficient confidence about what is likely to have happened, using its common sense, experience and sense of justice. It may not be able to complete the jigsaw but may have sufficient pieces for some conclusions to be drawn as to how the picture would have developed. For example, there may be insufficient evidence, or it may be too unreliable, to enable a tribunal to say with any precision whether an employee would, on the balance of probabilities, have been dismissed, and yet sufficient evidence for the tribunal to conclude that on any view there must have been some realistic chance that he would have been. Some assessment must be made of that risk when calculating the compensation even though it will be a difficult and to some extent speculative exercise."
"… where the question is whether there was a chance of the employee being fairly dismissed in the future, the percentage chance is likely to vary according to the timescale under consideration. Thus, there may be a 20% chance of dismissal in six months but a 30% chance in a year. In such circumstances, it may not be possible to identify an overall percentage risk."
"In particular, double recovery should be avoided by taking appropriate account of the overlap between the individual heads of damage. The extent of overlap will depend on the facts of each particular case."
"Looked at holistically, the award for injury to feelings of£15,000.00 is about right."
"(3) If … it appears to the employment tribunal that – (a) the claim to which the proceedings relate concerns a matter to which one of the statutory procedures applies, (b) the statutory procedure was not completed before the proceedings were begun, and (c) the non-completion of the statutory procedure was wholly or mainly attributable to failure by the employer to comply with a requirement of the procedure, it must, subject to subsection (4), increase any award which it makes to the employee by 10 per cent and may, if it considers it just and equitable in all the circumstances to do so, increase it by a further amount, not so as to make a total increase of more than 50 per cent. (4) The duty under subsection … (3) to make a[n] … increase of 10 per cent does not apply if there are exceptional circumstances which would make a[n] … increase of that percentage unjust or inequitable, in which case the tribunal may make no … increase or a[n] … increase of such lesser percentage as it considers just and equitable in all the circumstances."
"(1) Section 31(3) does not, as has sometimes been loosely said, simply give tribunals a discretion to award an uplift of up to 50 per cent (subject only to the 'exceptional circumstances' provision in sub section 4). As Lady Smith pointed out in her judgment in Aptuit (Edinburgh) Ltd v Kennedy (UKEATS/0057/06 ), the section has a very specific structure. An uplift of 10 per cent is mandatory. The Tribunal then has a discretion to award more than 10 per cent, up to a maximum of 50 per cent, if it considers it just and equitable to do so in all the circumstances. It may be debatable whether there is a logical difference between a duty so formulated and a duty to award an uplift in the range 10 to 50 per cent; but it seems to us that there may be at least a difference of emphasis, and it is in any event always safer to follow the precise statutory formula. (2) It follows, as Lady Smith pointed out in McKindless Group v McLaughlin[2008] IRLR 678 , that where a tribunal exercises its discretion to award an uplift of more than 10 per cent it must give reasons for doing so. It will equally, of course, have to give reasons for not doing so where, as will generally but not invariably be the case, the claimant has advanced an argument that it was just and equitable to award more than 10 per cent. (3) Although the phrase 'just and equitable in all the circumstances' connotes a broad discretion, the relevant circumstances must nevertheless be confined to those which are related in some way to the failure to comply with the statutory procedures: see Aptuit at [47]. (4) The circumstances which will be relevant will inevitably vary from case to case and cannot be itemised, but they will certainly include: (a) whether the procedures were ignored altogether or applied to some extent (see Virgin Media Ltd v (1) Seddington and (2) Eland (UKEAT/0539/08 ) at [20]); (b) whether the failure to comply with the procedures was deliberate or inadvertent; and (c) whether there are circumstances which may mitigate the blameworthiness of the failure. Those factors are sometimes embraced under the labels of the 'culpability' or 'seriousness' of the failure. (5) Provided a tribunal has directed itself appropriately, this Tribunal will be very slow to interfere with its exercise of discretion: Cex Ltd v Lewis (UKEAT/0013/07 )."