Why it's so vital to fight the scrabble for compensation
MOST of the public are struggling to cope in the deepening recession but not Tarique Ghaffur, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
In a landmark case which highlights the destructive grip of the compensation culture, the high-ranking officer has just accepted a huge deal from the Met, courtesy of the taxpayer.
Earlier this year Ghaffur launched a high-profile legal action against the Met, claiming to be the victim of racial prejudice within the force.
Now, in return for dropping his lawsuit, Ghaffur has been rewarded with a payout of £300,000 plus a lump sum pension payment of £522,000 and an annual pension of £85,000.
It is an indicator of the values of the Met and other institutions that the handover of such lavish sums to a complainant could be deemed normal.
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They extort money by inventing grievances.
The disastrous compensation culture is paralysing the public sector. This culture is driven by greedy lawyers, money-grabbing pressure groups and cynical staff and in certain other cases has become nothing more than a scam to extort money from the State by inventing grievances.
Ghaffur, though devoid of any obvious leadership skills or authority, nevertheless rose to become Britain's third highest-ranked police officer.
In a public sector increasingly obsessed with cultural diversity it could be argued Ghaffur's Asian ethnicity was a help, not a hindrance, to his career.
But then the Met under Sir Ian Blair was never a normal organisation. He was so fixated with the fashionable agenda of inequality that he laid himself open to litigants with their claims of discrimination.
His politically correct approach helped to create the present climate of permanent grievance. As a result, the Met is now a cauldron of discontent.
Sadly, the experience of the Met is hardly unique.
The compensation culture is now sweeping right through both public and commercial sectors, encouraged by a string of increasingly large payouts, such as the award of £186,000 given to lesbian soldier Kerry Fletcher yesterday after she claimed to having suffered a campaign of harassment from a male sergeant.
Disgracefully, this payment is more than five times that which could be given to a soldier for losing a limb in battle.
In an atmosphere where every workplace complaint could lead to riches, it is no wonder that the number of cases going to tribunals is rocketing. In 2007/8 there were 189,348 cases, compared to 143,474 in 2006/7.
Many cases never even reach either a tribunal or a court because employers try to settle at the first hint of trouble, no matter how frivolous the claim.
This is partly because of the costs of fighting a legal action and partly because they want to avoid any damage to their credentials as employers.
I saw this all the time in the mid-Nineties when I was chairman of the Personnel Committee at Islington Council in north London, a body whose loud commitment to equal opportunities encouraged a string of disputes. I used to beg officers to fight when we were menaced with the threat of tribunal action but was always told that we could not afford it.
All too predictably the Labour Government has made the situation much worse over the past decade. Ministers are turning employment law into a charter for workplace litigants, some of whom know everything about their rights and nothing about the wider public good.
The compensation culture has been exacerbated in a number of ways. One is through the introduction of US-style nowin, no-fee cases so a litigant can take on an employer without worrying about the cost.
But in the tidal wave of public sector cases it is the taxpayer who has to pay both the fees of a successful litigant and the compensation payout.
Under Labour we have seen a deluge of legislation, such as the Human Rights Act of 1998, which has massively expanded the scope for action against the State. In one absurd case, a group of drug-addict prisoners were awarded £700,000 in compensation because attempts to break their habit were deemed to be an infringement of their human rights.
Equally, a raft of race and gender discrimination rules – such as the 2000 Race Relations Amendment Act – has encouraged staff to feel victimised, while employers are subjected to constant monitoring by politically correct commissars.
Disturbingly, it also appears that the burden of proof has been reversed and employers accused of discrimination are now guilty until they can prove themselves innocent. The position will become even more depressing once Harriet Harman's proposed Equality Law reaches the statute book. This will allow positive discrimination towards women and ethnic minorities in recruitment and promotion, thereby causing yet more division in the workplace.
Yet there may be a glimmer of hope. In a case this week, a woman who made up to £100,000 in a series of out-of-court settlements over her spurious claims of age discrimination was finally brought to book by a tribunal.
Five firms against which Margaret Keane had made her charges decided to fight her and the tribunal decided in their favour, concluding that she had submitted job applications with the aim of gaining compensation.
The five companies are now pursuing her for costs. I hope they win. I have always felt that employers should get tougher instead of meekly surrendering.
One easy way would be to start counter-suing applicants, threatening them with action for libel or damages. That would soon sort out the moneygrabbers. The something-for-nothing culture, which wreaks so much havoc, has to be challenged and beaten.
