Item 10(a) of both staff and management contracts informed us that we would find Disciplinary Procedure

"As detailed in ‘Disciplinary Rules and Procedures’, a copy of which is available from your Manager."

Our contracts also contained either the sentence

"Other conditions as detailed in ‘Grattan & You’ Staff Handbook"

or the sentence

"Other conditions as detailed in ‘Grattan & You’ Management Handbook."

The revised August 2001 Stop and Search policy contained a sentence describing the policy as non-contractual and as not forming part of our terms and conditions of employment. However, Grattan had still not removed the sentence

"Any refusal to be searched will be dealt with as ‘a failure to conform with normal/agreed working practices and procedures’ under the disciplinary rules."

The phrase ‘failure to conform…’ etc. was a quotation from the section headed "DISCIPLINARY RULES & PROCEDURES" in the ‘Grattan and You’ information handbooks. (Note that they not only quoted from the handbooks, but actually used quotation marks.)

The introductions of the "Grattan and You" handbooks started with

So the Stop and Search policy quoted from our contractual terms and conditions of employment, to justify disciplinary action. Sue Wilkinson, of Grattan’s HR Department, told the Tribunal that Grattan plc had always made it clear that the policy was non-contractual, and that it did not form part of our terms and conditions of employment.

The Tribunal was aware of all of the above facts, from my cross-examination of Sue Wilkinson and from my closing statement.

Then there was the sign.

Before the Tribunal hearing, Grattan plc and I had to agree a bundle of documents for use at the hearing. Grattan’s solicitor, Mr Simon Rice-Birchall of Eversheds, offered to prepare the bundle, and I accepted. Both via email and in person, I had asked him to include, in the bundle, confirmation of the text of a sign that I had seen at an entrance to Grattan’s warehouse on the Anchor House site. The text included the sentence

I wanted the confirmation included because it was more evidence that Grattan plc (at least in some areas of their business) had taken pains to inform employees that they did have a contractual Stop and Search policy. Unfortunately, when I received a copy of the bundle of documents, I found that Mr Rice-Birchall had apparently forgotten to include confirmation of the text. On May 30^th 2002, I sent Mr Rice-Birchall an email in which I stated that if Grattan did not supply confirmation of the text before the hearing, I would have to ask the Tribunal for a postponement, so that I could call numerous witnesses. On the same day, Mr Rice-Birchall replied with a confirmation of the text.

Later, during cross-examination, Mr Rice-Birchall asked me whether I knew that the sign only referred to Parcelnet employees. It was a loaded question. If I simply answered "no", it would imply that I accepted that the sign did apply only to Parcelnet employees.

(I quote from paragraph 1 of Grattan’s amended version of the EAT chronology, as an explanation of the nature of Parcelnet: -

"As a result of a merger between Grattan and Freemans, the logistics function of Grattan and Freemans merged to form a new company, Parcelnet. Similarly, the IT departments of Grattan and Freemans merged to form the company Electinfo. The new companies were subsidiaries of Otto UK, like Grattan and Freemans, but the terms and conditions of former Grattan employees were unchanged.")

I replied that the sign could not apply only to Parcelnet employees, as the sign did not mention Parcelnet. Later, when I cross-examined Allan Lambert (the Otto UK Group Security Manager), I asked him whether Grattan employees used the entrance with the sign. He replied that he was a Grattan employee, and that he used the entrance. I asked him whether Grattan employees would think that the sign applied to them. He replied