Employment status and human rights: an emerging approach

The question of who falls within the ‘personal scope’ of employment law is of fundamental importance to the field but remains highly contested. This article makes a novel contribution by examining the implications of human rights in this context and advocating a fundamental shift in the courts’ approach to personal scope. It suggests that where employment legislation functions to protect human rights the scope of these statutes should, at the level of normative principle, be construed inclusively with any exclusions needing to be justified. The article then argues that the effect of the Human Rights Act 1998 is to introduce a new human rights approach to employment status into English law which closely reflects this proposal. It sets out the frameworks that domestic courts should apply, and critically assesses a line of recent cases which illustrate the emergence and significance of this human rights approach to personal scope.