Lawson v Serco Ltd

In Lawson v Serco Limited, the House of Lords considered the territorial scope of section 94(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, which gives employees the right not to be unfairly dismissed. The primary issue was whether the Act applies to employees working outside Great Britain. The court was required to decide the territorial limitations of section 94(1) and whether the Employment Tribunal had jurisdiction to hear claims under the Act in cases where the employment relationship had connections with Great Britain but the employee worked abroad.

The court reasoned that legislation is generally territorial and that section 94(1) must have implied territorial limits. While the original exclusion of cases where employees ordinarily worked outside Great Britain showed Parliament's intent to limit the scope of the Act, the repeal of section 196 meant that the courts were no longer confined to this single criterion. The court considered various formulations proposed by counsel but ultimately concluded that the application of section 94(1) should depend on whether the employee was working in Great Britain at the time of dismissal. The court found that the standard case for the application of the Act was an employee working in Great Britain, but peripatetic employees who were based in Great Britain could also be covered. For expatriate employees, the court held that section 94(1) could exceptionally apply if the employment relationship had a closer connection with Great Britain than with the foreign country where the employee worked.

The court dismissed the appeal in Crofts v Veta Limited and allowed the appeals in Lawson v Serco Limited and Botham v Ministry of Defence, remitting the latter two cases to the Employment Tribunals for hearings on the merits.