Disciplinary hearings

A recent High Court ruling suggests that the principal of judicial impartiality, which means that a person taking a hearing should not be in a position where they could be prejudiced, applies to internal disciplinary hearings. In the case of R v Chief Constable of Merseyside Police ex parte Bennion [2000] IRLR 821, a chief constable who, as the head of the force, was named as the responding employer in a sex discrimination claim, broke the principal of judicial impartiality when he also headed an internal disciplinary enquiry against the same employee.

In making its ruling, and quashing the decision of the internal disciplinary hearing, the court said that it is not just the public courts and tribunals which are bound to be impartial but that it applies to every judicial decision maker. The ruling certainly covers internal statutory disciplinary procedures like those for the police, but could potentially apply to all disciplinary procedures. This would mean that, where an individual has a court or tribunal case, the person named as the employer should not also be in charge of any internal hearing.