Employment Matters - July 2023

Published 10 July 2023

This month's alert, covers a case in which helpful guidance was provided by the EAT on managing employees who express gender critical views which others find offensive.

This alert also includes our summary of recent employment cases in Northern Ireland and we have updated our table on Private Member's Bills so you can see where they are in their passage through Parliament. Parliament will rise for its summer recess on 20 July, so we are now at the point where there may not be time for all of the remaining Bills to receive Parliamentary Assent.

This month the Court of Session upheld the EAT's order to disclose an original investigation report in the case of University of Dundee v Chakraborty – please see our discussion of the case in the EAT here.

In May we reported on the Government's review of whistleblowing laws (click here). We are going to participate in this review. If you would like to input into this response, please contact Ceri Fuller.

On 30th June, the long awaited NHS Long Term Workforce Plan was published – see our article here.

1. Taxing termination payments: Exemption for injury and disability payments

The First-tier Tax Tribunal has held that the exemption from tax for injury and disability payments applied to part of a termination payment paid on account of an employee's ill health in spite of the fact that the payment did not relate only to the employee's ill health. An apportionment after the fact was permissible.

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2. DSARs: What the updated ICO guidance means for employers

The ICO has recently published new guidance, in the form of a series of questions and answers, specifically for employers on data subject access requests (DSARs). 

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3. Balancing conflicting rights in the workplace: Basic principles set out by the EAT

The EAT has upheld an appeal against an employment tribunal's decision that an employee was not directly discriminated against or harassed because of her protected gender critical beliefs and has set out useful principles which will help employers in balancing conflicting rights in the workplace.

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4. Legislative developments

Private Members Bills affecting employers continue to make their way through Parliament. We set out their progress below. Whether they will receive Royal Assent before the summer recess remains to be seen.

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5. Northern Ireland employment case law update

In our second update from Northern Ireland we take a look at a couple of NI Court of Appeal cases.

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