In the case Saggar v Ministry of Defence [2005] , it was held that an overseas based employee of a British business, who was a UK resident when recruited or at any time during the course of the employee’s employment, is entitled to bring a discrimination claim in the UK . The claim can be brought even if the employee did no further work in Britain after the move overseas.
After 16 years at a Ministry of Defence base in Britain , Lieutenant Colonel Surinder Nath Saggar was permanently stationed in Cyprus from 1998 and was still there when he made a claim for race discrimination.
The Employment Tribunal decided that Lieutenant Saggar worked wholly outside Britain and could not file a race discrimination claim in Britain . He appealed against this decision to the Employment Appeals Tribunal (“EAT”).
The EAT dismissed the appeal and held that:-
In order for Lieutenant Saggar’s claim to succeed, the EAT would have to look at the whole of his employment from 1982 onwards, and that would be “absurd”;
The EAT was bound by the decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Carver v Saudi Arabian Airlines [1999]...