John has been the prime defender of local authorities in the many thousands of claims brought by women for equal pay in Scotland England and Wales. Councils represented include Dorset, Gateshead, Glasgow, Hampshire, Newcastle, Rochdale, South Tyneside, Stockton, Sunderland.
John is presently involved in many thousands of equal pay cases in Scotland, the North East and South of England relating to the local government single status from which there have so far been two leading cases; Allen v Newcastle City Council and South Tyneside MBC v Anderson [2007] ICR 1571. In the NHS equal pay litigation his case of Hartley v Northumbria Health Care NHS Trust was the lead case for the whole country; he successfully defended the case for the Health Care Trust and it was not appealed. He thus helped to save the NHS billions of pounds. He conducted the appeal for the local authorities in McAvoy v South Tyneside MBC [2009] IRLR 796, the EAT decision on the role of male contingent equal pay claims and the NHS Trust in Brownbill v St Helens NHS Trust [2010] ICR 1383 which con¬cerned what precise contractual terms fell to be compared in an equal pay case. He appeared successfully for the NHS Trust in Hovell v Ashford & St Peters Hospital NHS Trust [2009] IRLR 734, a test case heard in the Court of Appeal about the proper use of independent experts in equal value cases. He also appeared in the Court of Appeal in Sodexho v Gutteridge [2009] IRLR 721 which is the leading case about the interconnection of TUPE and equal pay.
