The European Convention for Protection of Human Rights

The European Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental

Freedoms is more commonly known as ‘the Convention’ was introduced by

the Council of Europe in 1950 and was then enforced in 1953. The

reason for the Convention being introduced was to prevent events which

occurred during the World War Two from occurring again. The aim of

the Convention was to protect individuals’ rights against

infringements by the state. The Human Rights Act 1998 developed

Convention rights into UK domestic law through a restricted basis, the

Act came into force on 2nd October 2000. Human Rights Act is set to

have an immense amount of protection for both private and public

sector employees. It means individuals can ascertain their Convention

rights against the state in a UK court and no longer have to go to

Strasbourg. However if domestic legislation is unambiguous and can

not be interpreted in accordance with Convention, the domestic statute

takes precedence.1 It’s unlawful for public authority to act in a way

which is incompatible with Convention rights. There are situations

were the court has decided that primary legislation is incompatible

with Convention rights which then leads to a ‘declaration of

compatibility’ being issued. An Employment Tribunal can not make a

declaration of incompatibility, therefore employment cases have to

wait until they have reached Court of Appeal. Enforcing the

Convention has had many financial and practical implications. An

example of this is R.V. Admiralty Board of the Defence council, exp.

Lustig - Prean.2 “Fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by

an independent and impartial tribunal established by law”. Article 6

is the right to a fair trial, the implications which this article will

have on employment law is in cases where employee’s feel they have

unfairly been dismissed by their public sector employer. It could be

argued that the employment tribunal system is a breach of Article 6,

which is demonstrated in Smith v Secretary for Trade and Industry3 and

in Scanfuture UK ltd v Secretary for State for Trade4 which led to the