HR Articles

Following complaints from customers of scammers calling with personal details such as account numbers, TalkTalk’s investigators found that 3 employees at their subcontractor, Wipro, had used TalkTalk’s portal to gain unauthorised access to the personal data of 21,000 customers, Wipro had this access to deal with network problems, but the ICO were unimpressed with the lack of restrictions on Wipro staff accessing customer’s data

In Norway, details of individuals’ net income, net assets and amount of tax paid are all accessible to the general public. An individual may simply use their national ID number to access the data on the tax authority’s website. Former economics editor, Tom Staavi suggests the rationale behind the system is that Norwegians pay a higher level of income tax compared to other European countries. Tax payers therefore want reassurance that others are also paying their dues.

Last week in Gascoigne v Addison Lee an Employment Tribunal decided that a cycle courier was a worker and not self-employed. Following the pattern emerging from other similar cases, the Tribunal was influenced by the claimant’s requirement to provide personal service and also the level of control exercised by Addison Lee over the claimant. Yet again the Tribunal was not convinced by a written contract which stated that the claimant was “self-employed” and was willing to look behind that label.

Section 136 of the Equality Act 2010 is headed “the burden of proof”. It has long been considered that in discrimination cases the claimant has to show a ‘prime facie’ case for discrimination before the burden shifts to the respondent to show that its actions were not discriminatory.

This week, the Home Office published new guidance for employers setting out the right to work checks required to establish or retain a statutory excuse.

The Court of Appeal has rejected a previous judgment which suggested that damages for psychiatric injury in the Employment Tribunal are always indivisible.

Last month, the Government commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), with the purpose of conducting a study about and advising upon the economic and social impacts of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Following the Home Secretary's commissioning letter last week, the MAC has released a Call of Evidence, from anyone with relevant knowledge, expertise or experience to aid the MAC response.

The Supreme Court decision on 26 July 2017 that Employment Tribunal fees were unlawful was expected to have wide-ranging repercussions

Details of the Data Protection Bill were revealed yesterday. The Government announced that the new laws will provide people with more control over how their personal information is used and ensure that people can withdraw consent to use their data just as easily as they can grant it.

In Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council v Willetts and others the EAT has ruled that payments for voluntary overtime should be included in holiday pay calculations.