Currently many employers include a ‘health questionnaire’ in their recruitment packs, enabling them to discover job candidates’ health issues before interviews are offered. A new law, implemented by the Equality Act, will soon prevent prospective employers from asking a job applicant about his or her health before offering work.

It is often said that proceedings at an employment tribunal are informal. Whilst this may have been the intention of the government that set up the present system forty odd years ago it is not what has happened in practice and there is better example of this than the fact that from the beginning of 2008 the presiding official at a tribunal has ceased to
be called a chairman and is now called an Employment Judge.

Discrimination laws are designed to ensure equality of opportunity at work, to protect employees’ dignity and to ensure that complaints can be raised without fear of reprisal.