Police Law Blog European Decisions Statutory Materials

Shared Parental Leave: paying fathers and mothers different rates is discrimination

Written by: Jonathan Davies
Published: 2 May 2018

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has handed down judgment in the appeal case of Hextall v Leicestershire Police UKEAT/0139/17/DA. Mr Hextall is a police officer who took Shared Parental Leave. However, under the informal national policy that exists at the current time in relation to the payment of such leave, he was paid only at the statutory rate and not the enhanced rate paid to mothers taking maternity leave.

Mr Hextall argued that that policy put men at a particular disadvantage compared to women because it acted as a financial disincentive to their taking such leave where mothers had the alternative option of taking maternity leave. As such, he said, it constituted unlawful indirect sex discrimination. Hextall is linked to another (non-police) case, Capita v Ali UKEAT/0139/17/DA.

In short, the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that a failure to pay a male police officer taking Shared Parental Leave the same rate of pay as a female police officer taking Maternity Leave potentially constitutes indirect sex discrimination. Jonathan Davies represented Leicestershire Police in both the employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

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Judicial review or internal appeal against bias?

Written by: Elliot Gold
Published: 8 March 2018

Where a police officer makes an unsuccessful application for a panel to recuse itself on the grounds of perceived (or actual) bias, can he apply for judicial review of the decision before exhausting his ‘internal’ right of appeal (under rule 4(4)(c) of the Police Appeals Tribunal Rules 2012)?

The law in foreign, common-law jurisdictions is different but a similar question in relation to a doctor and a misconduct panel was answered affirmatively by the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa in Basson v Health Professions Council of South Africa [2018] ZASCA 1.

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Police liability for failures in criminal investigations

Written by: Elliot Gold
Published: 22 February 2018

The hits for the police keep on coming. The decision in Commissioner of the Metropolis v (1) DSD (2) NBV [2018] UKSC 11 confirms that the police can be liable in proceedings for a breach of Article 3’s prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment (and possibly Article 4’s prohibition on slavery) where they fail to perform an adequate criminal investigation into alleged serious ill-treatment.

This decision was less of a surprise than Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4 – given the strength of the earlier judgments both at first instance and in the Court of Appeal. That said, it is hard to say anything other than that the courts are slowly but surely eroding out of existence the police’s ‘immunity’ from claims arising out of the performance of its core duties.

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Not so fast-track! Holding a standard misconduct hearing after a quashed fast-track decision

Written by: Aaron Rathmell
Published: 13 February 2018

Where an officer is dismissed at a fast-track hearing, based upon a conviction which is then subsequently overturned, a Police Appeals Tribunal (‘PAT’) will likely allow the misconduct appeal. In such circumstances, there has been no finding on the merits in misconduct proceedings to prevent the officer from facing a subsequent standard-track hearing. So said the Court of Appeal in CC Nottinghamshire v R (Gray) [2018] EWCA Civ 34.

The appeal concerned the application of the form of res judicata known as cause of action estoppel to two hotly contested sets of police disciplinary proceedings, against a backdrop of criminal proceedings – all in respect of the same events.

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