Remuneration in UK Law

In the past several explanations have been offered by Judges of eminence as to the significance of the word "from" in this context. For my part I think that their meaning is adequately conveyed by saying that, while it is not sufficient to render a payment assessable that an employee would not have received it unless he had been an employee, it is assessable if it has been paid to him in return for acting as or being an employee.

I know of no principle upon which he can claim as damages for breach of one service agreement compensation for remuneration which might have become due under some imaginary future agreement which the plaintiffs did not make with him but might have done if they wished.

Is it in reality a form of insurance or is it something quite different? It is generally recognised that pensionable employment is more valuable to a man than the mere amount of his weekly wage. It is more valuable because by reason of the terms of his employment money is being regularly set aside to swell his ultimate pension rights whether on retirement or on disablement. The products of the sums paid into the pension fund are in fact delayed remuneration for his current work.

(3) At the end of the employment, the employer and the employee agree that the employment is to terminate forthwith on payment of a sum in lieu of notice. Again, the employer is not in breach of contract by dismissing summarily and the payment in lieu is not stictly wages since it is not remuneration for work done during the continuance of the employment.

However, the summary dismissal is effective to put an end to the employment relationship, whether or not it unilaterally discharges the contract of employment. Since the employment relationship has ended no further services are to be rendered by the employee under the contract. It follows that the payment in lieu is not a payment of wages in the ordinary sense since it is not a payment for work done under the contract of employment.

It is a settled principle of law that if a public authority purports to dismiss the holder of a public office in excess of its powers, or in breach of natural justice, or unlawfully (categories which overlap), the dismissal is, as between the public authority and the office-holder, null, void and without legal effect, at any rate once a court of competent jurisdiction so declares or orders.

In my judgment the question whether non payment of agreed wages, or interference by an employer with a salary package, is or is not fundamental to the continued existence of a contract of employment, depends on the critical distinction to be drawn between an employer's failure to pay, or delay in paying, agreed remuneration, and his deliberate refusal to do so.