The new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act will grant legal protection to employees that hold extreme political views, says EMW, the commercial law firm.

Under the new law, holding extremist political views will no longer be eligible grounds for dismissal from a company, provided that those beliefs are only expressed outside of office hours. This will leave employers with very little ability to tackle conflict arising when staff members are aware that a colleague believes, for example, that the children of immigrants have no right to live in the UK, or that Sharia law should be imposed in the UK.The new measures, which come into force this month, have been included in the Act after a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Redfearn v Serco Ltd late last year. The ECHR said that current UK employment law was incompatible with the European human rights law.

Arthur Redfearn was a bus driver for Serco Ltd. He had previously been described as a valued employee, and even given an award by Serco. However, when he was elected as a BNP councillor in Bradford, he was made redundant on ‘health and safety’ grounds. The company’s reasoning was that in an area with a multi-ethnic population, his political views would make him a target for violent attacks, potentially making for an unsafe bus service. His views were also causing operational difficulties as other employees refused to work with him.

Serco won at the Employment Tribunal, but after a long legal battle, the ECHR finally ruled in the employee’s favour. Jon Taylor, Partner at EMW, comments: “This case is an historic one as it has led to the protection of an employee’s political views being explicitly enshrined in UK law, making it just as difficult to dismiss someone for extremist political beliefs as it would be to discriminate against them on the grounds of religion, race and gender. Whilst political freedom is clearly important, other employees could be made to feel very uncomfortable if they are forced to work alongside individuals they know to hold extremist views. If that person were to have a public profile, as in Redfearn’s case, it could also be viewed negatively by customers.”

EMW says that if employers want to sack an employee because of his or her political beliefs and their potential to upset colleagues, customers or other business contacts, it could prove to be difficult to remove them, even on the basis that the employee’s presence posed serious operational or commercial threats. Explains Jon Taylor: “As we saw in the Redfearn case, trying to sack someone because their political views pose health and safety or other operational issues, is now a risky decision. Companies faced with this problem will usually find their options to work around the situation are very limited. An employee might be prepared to take a less public-facing role but it will be almost impossible to prevent contact with potentially hostile colleagues as well.”