The Employment Tribunal (“ET”) struck out the claimant’s claims for disability discrimination (direct, indirect and disability related discrimination) on the basis that they were precluded by a compromise agreement entered into by the parties in 2013 and on the basis that they had no reasonable prospects of success.

The claimant was continuously absent from work as a result of ill-health from September 2008 and has not worked since. In 2012 he pursued a grievance relating to various matters including the failure to transfer him to the respondent’s Disability Plan. Under the terms of the compromise agreement, the respondent agreed that the claimant would move to the Disability Plan and receive disability salary payments at a specified level. The terms of the Plan indicated that an increase in these payments was discretionary. Under the terms of the compromise, the claimant waived the right to bring various specified claims, including disability discrimination claims, whether or not they were or could be in the contemplation of the parties at the date of the agreement. An exception in respect of future claims did not apply to matters connected to the grievance or its appeal or arising from the claimant’s transfer to the Disability Plan.

The ET proceedings included complaints of disability discrimination arising from the fact that since his transfer, the claimant had not had annual salary reviews and the level of payments he received had not been increased since he entered into the Plan. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) held that the ET was right to conclude that the compromise agreement precluded the disability discrimination claims. It was accepted that they came within the terms of the waiver; the issue was whether that agreement met the statutory prerequisites for a qualifying settlement agreement within the meaning of sections 144(1) and 147 Equality Act 2010; and, in particular, whether section 147(3)(b) was satisfied in that the parties’ contract “relates to the particular complaint”. Relying on Bathgate v Technip UK Ltd [2023] ICR 191, the claimant submitted that this provision did not extend to claims that arose after the compromise agreement was entered into. However, by the time of the appeal hearing, the Court of Session had overturned the EAT’s decision: Bathgate v Technip Singapore Pte Ltd [2023] CSIH 48, [2024] IRLR 326, holding that future claims could be validly compromised by a qualifying settlement agreement if the preconditions were met. The EAT rejected the claimant’s contention that the Court of Session’s decision was wrong and should not be followed, and also his alternative contention that the circumstances were distinguishable because in the present case, unlike in Bathgate, the parties had remained in an employment relationship after the compromise agreement.

As the disability discrimination claims were precluded by the compromise agreement, the other grounds of appeal were academic. In any event, the EAT dismissed these grounds on their merits on the basis that this was a case where, taking the claimant’s case as its highest, none of the discrimination claims had any reasonable prospects of success. The comparison relied upon by the claimant for the purposes of the direct and indirect discrimination claims was not a valid one; the complaint was incapable of amounting to indirect discrimination as it concerned differential treatment of disabled and non-disabled employees, rather than the application of a common provision, criterion or practice; and the disability related discrimination claim sought to identify unfavourable treatment by impermissibly isolating the absence of salary reviews from the beneficial treatment that the claimant received under the Disability Plan.

[Summary reproduced from the EAT judgment]