When time-honoured legal principles collide with modern life

My contribution today concerns two matters relating to the laws of England and Wales that I’ve come across recently and thought I’d share with my fellow Rusters.

As is my traditional practice I shall open my discourse with a disclaimer and/or perhaps that should be “declaration of (non) interest” – to wit, that although I studied law briefly nearly five decades ago I never practiced the profession. As a result, my grasp of legal nous is essentially limited to broad principles rather than up-to-date knowledge of current statute and/or “precedent” detail.

That registered, I’d submit that – for present purposes – this weakness is of little or no consequence.

The first of my examples springs from the experience of a contributor to this organ who recently moved from “town” to “country” as part of his later-life plan and with whom I am in occasional contact via phone and/or social media.

Last week he told me he had received a letter from someone described as the credit controller in the “accounts” department of an electricity supplier.

In bald terms, this missive advised that he (my transplanted “townie”) was in breach of contract by not yet having paid his outstanding bill of nearly £500 and that – if he failed “pay up” the full amount within five days of the date of the letter [two of which had already passed before its arrival]  – his electricity supply would be cut off.

He therefore decided to ring the organisation concerned in an effort to take the issue forward.  He finally managed to speak to a human being after “hanging on” for nearly threequarters of an hour.

He began by explaining the position from his perspective.

In November he had received an email from an officer of the utility company concerned asking him to supply a meter reading, which he did by email the next day.

He had received no communication whatsoever from the company since then – that is, until the above-mentioned “You’re In Breach of Contract And Must Pay Now Or We’ll Cut You Off” threat arrived.

He stated the material facts that he had received neither a contract nor an invoice – and had therefore been considerably surprised and shocked to have received out of the blue the aforementioned “Final Notice” demand.

He also asserted that he couldn’t be in breach of contract because – amongst the necessary four components before a contract can exist between two parties under the law of England and Wales – is the requirement that there has to have been an “offer” of a product or service (made by one party) and then an “acceptance of that offer” (by the other).

As far as he was concerned, to the best of his knowledge he had never received an offer from the utility company concerned – still less a draft contract setting out any terms and conditions relevant to said offer. In other words, thus far he had had no opportunity to accept any offer made by the company – specifically because they hadn’t yet made him one.

Furthermore, he noted for the record that the “Final Notice” letter he had received from them contained the allegation that his “payment via direct debit” had not been received. On that point, he confirmed to the accounts department staffer he was speaking to that indeed he had never set up a direct debit as a means of payment.

For a start, he had never been asked to.

In addition, as far as he was aware, the company had never asked him to make a single payment.

To cut to the chase, dear reader, my understand of the current position is that the utility company concerned has apologised and promised to send a him contract and invoice as soon as possible.

The second of my “legal” examples today is a comment upon one of the troubling news causes celebre of the past week – the summary “letting go” of 800 of its employees by the P & O ferry services company.

This was a shocking development even in the current difficult and complicated global economic circumstances and against the background of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

My initial reaction upon learning of it was profound puzzlement: firstly, that a major UK internationally-known flagship (and not just metaphorical in P & O’s case) business was capable of scoring such an horrendous “Own Goal”; and, secondly, that apparently in advance no one on their board – or indeed in their marketing, public relations and/or press office teams – seemed to have raised the likely (inevitable?) furore that would result.

Or, if they had, nobody in authority took any notice and/or bothering to think through the implications.

Which brings me to my second and final “legal” matter today.

It’s a very simple and straightforward one, as anyone who ever took “A” level law, as I once did, could have pointed out.

Spot the glaring illogicality and potential legal problem in the following representation [my words] of what P & O was announcing this week:

“We are announcing 800 redundancies with immediate effect – and will in future be operating by taking on sufficient numbers of cheaper foreign seafaring workers, some of them provided by agencies …”

Answer:

Under the law of England and Wales, as long as he or she has been with an employer for any necessary qualifying period of time, any employee effectively has the right not to be dismissed unfairly.

One of the reasons deemed “fair” for dismissing an employee is “redundancy”, i.e. the fact that their specific job (and/or the need for it generally) has ceased to exist.

In a redundancy situation, the employer will be deemed to have discharged its responsibilities to any departing employee if it pays them in accordance with the statutory redundancy terms and/or those that it has enshrined in its employee contracts.

However – and here I refer my readers again to the above P & O statement.

Simultaneously, they have announced 800 redundancies with immediate effect … and yet also announced that – once those former employees have departed – they’re going taking on cheaper foreign workers to do those supposedly “redundant” jobs.

Ergo, on the face of it, since the jobs concerned are still going to be needed to be done – by definition – they are not jobs that by any stretch could be termed “redundant”.

End of message.