Mr MJ Parr v The Home Secretary — 2019

The tribunal dealt with preliminary issues on Mr MJ Parr's equal pay, race discrimination and sex discrimination complaints against the Home Secretary. It recorded that his HM Inspector of Constabulary appointment was confirmed on 7 June 2016 at a salary of £133,983 plus a London allowance of £7,904, and that the appointment ran from 1 August 2016 to 31 July 2021. In 2017 he was re-appointed with separate HM Inspector of Fire and Rescue Authorities terms and a new warrant, which the tribunal treated as a new appointment but not as ending the overall stable working relationship.

On limitation, the tribunal held that the equal pay complaint was in time under the stable work provisions in section 129 EqA 2010. It found that the re-appointment and the HMIF role did not amount to a sufficiently significant change to break the stable working relationship. It did not make findings on the sex and race claims' timeliness on the limited evidence before it; it said that if those claims were confined to the original 2016 pay decision they would have been out of time, but whether later complaints and responses amounted to separate acts was left to the full tribunal.

The respondent's strike-out application against the equal pay claim was refused. The tribunal said the claim was not as clear as the respondent suggested, and that issues about what pay policy was applied, to whom, and whether any policy was tainted by sex were factual matters for the full hearing. It also considered that a possible equal pay argument based on a comparator was not obviously hopeless, although it thought success on that route was unlikely.

The tribunal nevertheless made a deposit order of £1,000 as a condition of pursuing the equal pay complaint. Applying rule 39 and the guidance in Hemdan v Ishmail & another, it concluded that the claim had little reasonable prospect of success on the material then available because the respondent was likely to defend it by saying that the new salary-scale policy was applied to newly appointed HMICs and was not because the claimant was a man. The claimant confirmed that he could afford the deposit and understood the consequences.