Conduct in UK Law

If the answer to each of those questions is "yes", the ET must then decide on the reasonableness of the response by the employer. In performing the latter exercise, the ET must consider, by the objective standards of the hypothetical reasonable employer, rather than by reference to the ET's own subjective views, whether the employer has acted within a "band or range of reasonable responses" to the particular misconduct found of the particular employee.

I reject as a proposition of law the notion that there can be no acceptance of a repudiation unless the employee tells the employer, at the time, that he is leaving because of the employer's repudiatory conduct. Each case will turn on its own facts and, where no reason is communicated to the employer at the time, the fact finding tribunal may more readily conclude that the repudiatory conduct was not the reason for the employee leaving.

In my judgment, the Employment Appeal Tribunal have not correctly interpreted the impact of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Madden. The range of reasonable responses test (or, to put it another way, the need to apply the objective standards of the reasonable employer) apply as much to the question whether the investigation into the suspected misconduct was reasonable in all the circumstances as it does to the reasonableness of the decision to dismiss for the conduct reason.

"It is clear from these expressions of opinion that, in order to constitute misbehaviour by the holder of an office, the conduct concerned need not be criminal conduct and need not occur in the course of the performance of the duties of the office.

It supports the view expressed in the criminal cases, from Borron to Shum Kwok Sher, that there must be a serious departure from proper standards before the criminal offence is committed; and a departure not merely negligent but amounting to an affront to the standing of the public office held. The threshold is a high one requiring conduct so far below acceptable standards as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in the office holder.

Section 98(4) requires the tribunal to determine whether the employer 'acted reasonably or unreasonably in treating it as a sufficient reason for dismissing the employee' and further to determine this in accordance with 'equity and the substantial merits of the case'. This suggests that there are both substantive and procedural elements to the decision to both of which the 'band of reasonable responses' test should be applied.