This week a member of the employment tribunal panel was formally rebuked for making anti-Christian comments resulting in a whole panel being recused from hearing the case of a Christian teacher. Mr Jed Purkis is a non-legal member of the Employment Tribunal in Nottingham. He describes himself as a lifelong socialist and trade unionist.

Mr Purkis’s Posts

Mr Purkis has now made his posts private, but earlier this year, while he was participating in controversial Employment Tribunal cases, they were public. 

Mr Purkis replied to a post on X last year which said:

“Only atheists should be allowed to run for office.”

Purkis replied:

“Damm right, you won’t catch us killing in the name of our non-god.”

Here Purkis appears to support banning members of any religion from running for office. He certainly displays bias against people who believe in God.

Mr Purkis’s posts only came to light in day six of the trial of Christian teacher ‘Hannah’

Another time, Pukis got involved in a discussion about whether wokeness is worse than atheism or Christianity. An atheist posted: 

“As an atheist, I find Christians worse than woke. Why? The woke believes in truth and caring. The Christian, like most religionists, have abandoned the concept of caring, often preach hate and also believe in made-up invisible super-beings.”

To this, Purkis replied:

“It they’re than fucking super how come there’s so much shit going on in the world.”

He then replied to a Christian who had argued that wokeness is worse than atheism, saying:

“Can you be corrected Bill? I need no ‘higher power’ to tell me the right way to treat people and behave. And I don’t need the threat of eternal damnation to make me behave [..] fashion.”

This is obviously anti-Christian bias. 

Other posts of Purkis displayed aggressive anti-Conservative bias, suggesting  an appropriate collective noun for Conservatives would be “A tumour of tories?” or “A cess pit of tories?” and saying his social media feed was “clogged up with right wing nut jobs.” Purkis also liked a post displaying a picture of then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, which said:

“Nowhere on God’s green earth would you find a politician as evil, stupid and repulsive as this fucking ghoul.”

There are more examples, but that is enough to demonstrate clear anti-Christian and anti-Conservative bias from Mr Purkis.

The recusal

Mr Purkis’s posts only came to light in day six of the trial of Christian teacher ‘Hannah’, who’s identity is anonymised for legal reasons. Hannah was sacked from her job as a teacher for raising safeguarding concerns about her school planning to ‘affirm’ the gender transition of an eight-year-old pupil with no medical evidence. Part of Hannah’s argument is that she would not go against her Christian conscience in affirming what she believed would be harmful for the child and possibly other pupils as well.

When these posts came to light, Hannah’s lawyer, Pavel Stroilov, applied for Mr Purkis to be recused on the basis that any fair-minded observer would see apparent bias in his advocacy of religious discrimination in public life. Stroilov also argued that the other two panel members should be recused since they would be perceived as being influenced by Purkis over the six days of the hearing. Following an adjournment to consider the application Judge Victoria Butler ruled that the whole panel should step down, acknowledging the perception of bias from Purkis’s posts. This means Hannah’s case will have to be heard again, delaying justice for her for several more months. It also means that the whole six-day hearing was a complete waste of everyone’s time and money, not least the taxpayer.

Formal warning

Mr Purkis has now been given a formal warning for judicial misconduct. He is said to have apologised and to have claimed that his tweets were intended to be light-hearted. He remains a member of the Employment Tribunal. This decision was made by the Senior President of the Tribunals, Sir Keith Lindblom, and the Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood.  Having recognised that there is a clear perception of bias, I am very surprised that Mr Purkis remains on the Employment Tribunal. If you are a Christian or a Conservative, I hope he is not selected to hear your case!

Not the only recusal

Following the recusal of Mr Purkis, we saw another recusal of an Employment Tribunal panel member. This time it was Mr Mohammad Taj, who was President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) between 2013 and 2014. He was found to have given speeches explicitly calling for equality for LGBT workers, and said that “LGBT workers – are victims as much as anyone.” Under his watch, a motion was passed condemning “underlying heterosexism and gender binary prejudice”. Another motion celebrated “Equal marriage legislation”. He reposted a tweet supporting a booklet by an “LGBT+ activist.”

The fact that we have seen so many recusals for bias demonstrates that there is a problem in employment tribunals

Mr Taj was a member of the tribunal set to hear the case of Felix Ngole who had a job offer withdrawn because of his Christian beliefs on sexual ethics. Mr Ngole was bringing a claim of direct discrimination, harassment and breaches of the equality act against the employer. Lawyers representing Mr Ngole pointed out the apparent bias in Mr Taj’s views and asked for him to be recused. The judge concluded that there was “a real possibility of bias” and consequently recused Mr Taj.

In another case last year, two lay panel members were recused for perceived bias on transgenderism and extreme sex education. This double recusal is probably unprecedented. These panel members were set to hear the case of Kristie Higgs who lost her job for sharing a petition on Facebook raising widely-shared concerns about sex education in primary schools. One of the panel members was found to be a high-profile trans activist. The other was former Assistant General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) at a time when it had campaigned for mandatory sex education in primary schools and was encouraging teaching primary school children about same-sex relationships and transgenderism. The case continued with the judge alone hearing it.

Bias in Employment Tribunals

The fact that we have seen so many recusals for bias demonstrates that there is a problem in employment tribunals. All of these recused panel members remain on the employment tribunal panel, in spite of their apparent bias being formally recognised. This does not inspire confidence in the independence of panel members. 

Employment Tribunal panels comprise a judge and two lay members: one from the world of business giving the perspective of an employer and one from a trade union, giving the employee’s perspective. This is understandable in many employment disputes but is clearly inappropriate in issues of free speech, if the employee’s views do not line up with the left wing beliefs of trade unions.

It seems that the employee panel members are very often trade union activists who are very left-wing politically and socially very liberal. These recusals are most likely the tip of the iceberg. Others will harbour similar views but will be less public about them. It appears to be more than likely now that an employment panel member will harbour anti-Christian bias.

What is the process for selecting panel members? Is there any assessment of who is appropriate for a particular case? Does anyone scrutinise them? I suspect that left-wing groupthink, or wokeism, is now rife amongst panel members. 

Mr Purkis, and Judge Victoria Butler were both panel members of the panel that heard the case of Rev Dr Bernard Randall who lost his job as school chaplain for preaching a sermon in chapel which said that pupils were free to disagree with LGBT teaching. Is it any surprise that Dr Randall lost his case when two panel members have since admitted apparent bias against Christians? Dr Randall is appealing this decision, and his lawyers will argue that the panel exhibited bias, amongst other grounds for appeal.

An independent judiciary?

How many other Employment Tribunal cases have been heard by panel members who are clearly biased against Christians or Conservatives? I suspect that nearly every panel now has a member who is fully brought in to the woke agenda. Any good Employment Tribunal lawyer should now automatically check panel members for apparent bias as soon as their names are released. This should become standard practice. 

I am pleased that the bias of these panel members has been exposed. It has highlighted a real issue. A formal warning to just one of them is surely not enough to inspire confidence in the independence of the judiciary, however? It seems the judiciary is not interested in making the changes necessary to preserve their independence. Is the judiciary now fully captured by woke ideology? Not quite I think, but it won’t be long now unless someone instigates some real changes.