Welcome to our monthly newsletter, with a summary of the latest news and developments in UK employment law.
Case law updates
Investigation reports – legal advice privilege: Employers should take heed of an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision which found that an investigation report will not retrospectively attract legal advice privilege by virtue of having legal advice on its content. In this case, a grievance investigation report was prepared by an independent member of the staff but was subsequently subject to a number of amendments by external legal advisors and by the original author. In later Employment Tribunal (ET) proceedings, only the final version was disclosed, although it was clear from annotations that it had been revised following legal advice. The claimant therefore sought, and succeeded with, an application for disclosure of the original and unamended report. The EAT rejected the argument that the original document was subject to legal advice privilege – the report was not privileged when it was first made (no legal advice had been received on it, and the report was not prepared in contemplation of litigation), and subsequent legal advice did not retrospectively mean that privilege could be attached. It was unclear which amendments were made as a result of legal advice and which were made by the author and were unrelated to that advice. Also, it was relevant that a comparison between the original and final versions could allow inferences to be drawn....
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh criticised the Election Commission of India (ECI) on October 2 for appointing a committee to review ECINET’s compliance with legal provisions, describing the commissi...