The territorial scope of the protections available for being
unfairly dismissed contained in Section 94(1) of the Employment
RightsAct 1996 have been a matter of some contention.
The provisions in Section 94(1) of the Employment RightsAct 1996
relevant to unfair dismissal do not stipulate their geographical
scope. As a result, a number of employment cases have been raised
which have considered whether employees working abroad are able to
bring unfair dismissal claims.
Many of these cases have been based upon the landmark House of
Lords decision in Lawson v Serco [2006] UKHL 3 and in particular
Lord Hoffman's categorisation of employees. In broad terms
these categories were: employees who ordinarily work in Great
Britain at the time of the dismissal, peripatetic employees who
move between jurisdictions but are based in the UK at the time of
dismissal and expatriate employees who have been posted abroad by a
British employer to further the business of that employer.
