The Court then went on to deal with the merits. There is one passage at page 919D to which I should make reference. Lord Justice Stephenson giving, in effect, the judgment of the Court of Appeal said:
"I accept Mr Cresswell's submission that the appeal tribunal erred in law in the principle which they sought to lay down. I would lay down no principle except the principle (if it can be called a principle) that the industrial tribunal chairmen should attempt to do justice as best he or she can in each individual case. I think it unnecessary and undesirable to go on to examine the reasons for the decision of the chairman in this case or the correctness of those reasons; but I think I have read enough of them to show how difficult it is to mount any argument that his decision was not a reasonable and sensible decision, and how impossible, in my judgment, it would be to argue that he had failed to take into account any relevant factors or taken into account any irrelevant factors in reaching the conclusion to which he came."...
Finally, I make reference to an unreported case Mavity v Brooks E.A.T.590/90 , a decision of this Tribunal on 21 December 1990. The judgment was delivered on 7 February 1991. At page 3, the learned judge Mr Justice Tucker said:
"The Industrial Tribunal considered all these matters. They set out with clarity the reasons for their decision. In the end it was a question of exercising their discretion one way or the other. They having exercised this discretion against the appellants, the appellants now appeal against the decision. Counsel has analysed it with painstaking thoroughness. He submits that the tribunal went wrong in the following respects. [Then some seven respects are set out]. We have considered these submissions. We reject them. In our opinion the Tribunal was perfectly entitled to come to the decision which it did in the exercise of its discretion. The discretion was properly exercised. It was not incumbent upon them to set out and deal with seriatim each and every one of the submissions made to them, nor to refer to every consideration which affected their decision.
In our view those decisions do not assist the appellants. There is no principle of general application to be derived from them. We are certainly not persuaded that there is any concluded approach - the fact that there may be a tendency to go in one direction does not mean that Industrial Tribunals or the EAT are bound to do so. It must always be a matter of balance of convenience and fairness, and a matter for the exercise of the discretion of the first instance tribunal."...
We in this Tribunal would echo those words. We have considered the arguments put forward and are clearly of the view we are unpersuaded that the Chairman of the Tribunal exercised his discretion wrongly or in circumstances which would be right for this Tribunal to interfere. We are unanimous in the view that the appeal fails and must be dismissed.