Lawal v Northern Spirit Ltd

Further to my earlier Email, the judgment is now available.

It is a very short judgment. The House of Lords holds that there is a real possibility of bias where a Queen's Counsel appears as representative in front of a division of the EAT where he has previously sat as part-time judge with one or both wing members.

At paragraph 23, the House of Lords state:

"...Like Pill LJ in the Court of Appeal we consider that the present practice in the EAT tends to undermine public confidence in the system. It should be discontinued. It follows that the present practice in the EAT should be assimilated to that in the Employment Tribunal by introducing a restriction on part-time judges appearing as counsel before a panel of the EAT consisting of one or two lay members with whom they had previously sat."