Ian Smith considers spent convictions, TUPE transfer affected employees & the enforceability of collective agreements
The decision of Keith J in A v B UKEAT/0025/13 explores an unusual element of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 which hitherto has not surfaced significantly in the employment sphere. Section 4 provides for the normal rules on convictions becoming spent and so not adduceable in evidence. There has been significant lengthening over recent years of the categories of exceptions in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (SI 1975/1023), but this case concerned a general exception in s 7(3) which provides: “If at any stage in any proceedings before a judicial authority in Britain…the authority is satisfied, in the light of any considerations which appear to it to be relevant…that justice cannot be done in the case except by admitting or requiring evidence relating to a person’s spent convictions or to circumstances ancillary thereto, that authority may admit or, as the case may be, require the evidence in question notwithstanding the provisions
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