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Green views now legally on a par with religious belief |
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21 Apr 2010, 11:38 AM
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The ex-head of sustainability at property company Grainger has won £750,000 in compensation from his former employers after he claimed that he had been made redundant over his views on green issues. Tim Nicholson, 42, won the landmark ruling at a central London employment tribunal this month after he challenged the residential landlord over his treatment. Nicholson claimed that he was made redundant in July 2008 after his opinions on climate change differed to other senior executives at the firm.
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He was claiming a total of £756,615 in compensation, including £587,925 for loss of earnings and £20,000 for injury to his personal feelings.
In November last year, at a previous hearing Mr Justice Michael Burton arrived at the landmark conclusion that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".
In March 2009, employment judge David Heath had given Nicholson permission to take the firm to tribunal over his treatment. But Grainger challenged the ruling on the grounds that green views were political and based on science, as opposed to religious or philosophical in nature.
John Bowers QC, representing Grainger, had argued that adherence to climate change theory was "a scientific view rather than a philosophical one", because "philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof."
That argument was subsequently dismissed by Mr Justice Burton, who last year ruled that the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore was political and partisan. The decision sets a precedent for how environmental beliefs are regarded in English law.
Nicholson told a previous hearing that his views were so strong that he refused to travel by air and had renovated his house to be environmentally-friendly. But his beliefs led to frequent clashes with Grainger's other managers, while he said that Rupert Dickinson, the firm's chief executive, treated his concerns with "contempt".
Once Dickinson flew a member of staff to Ireland to deliver his Blackberry mobile phone after leaving it in London, Nicholson claimed.
Nicholson hailed the Employment Appeals Tribunal ruling as "a victory for common sense" but stressed climate change was "not a new religion". He said: "I believe man-made climate change is the most important issue of our time and nothing should stand in the way of diverting this catastrophe. This philosophical belief that is based on scientific evidence has now been given the same protection in law as faith-based religious belief.
"Belief in man-made climate change is not a new religion, it is a philosophical belief that reflects my moral and ethical values and is underlined by the overwhelming scientific evidence."
His lawyer Shah Qureshi, head of employment law at Bindmans LLP, argued that if the ruling had gone against them, "the end result would be that the more evidence there is to support your views, the less likely it would be for you to enjoy protection against discrimination".
The grounds for Nicholson's case stemmed from changes to employment law made by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, in the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003. The regulations effectively broadened the protection to cover not just religious beliefs or those "similar" to religious beliefs, but philosophical beliefs as well.
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