PCS check off victory over the Home Office 8 years on

PCS wins High Court case against Home Office over Union subs

Following the Home Office decision to end checkoff for members in the Home Office in 2014 PCS took a case to court. The ruling has determined the Home Office acted unlawfully in breaching contracts and they will now have to pay substantial damages to the union.

PCS has won another stunning victory in the High Court on the issue of checkoff, this time against the Home Office. It follows a similar victory against the Department for Work and Pensions, who were forced to pay the union £3 million in damages.

On 1 December 2014, the Home Office removed the checkoff facility from PCS members. Check off was the system by which members paid their subscriptions to the union through the employer's payroll system. The Home Office’s action was taken around the same time as the vast majority of other civil service employers removed the checkoff facility at the urgings of the then Minister for the Cabinet office, Francis Maude.

PCS made it absolutely clear to the Home Office when they threatened to remove checkoff we believed it was unlawful and we would take them to court. Despite these warnings senior managers within Home Office went ahead and removed this facility from members threatening the very existence of PCS.

There was no rational reason to remove the checkoff facility – PCS believes that it was a politically motivated attack designed to bankrupt the union by cutting off its subscription income, due to the leading role that our union played in the fightback against the then governments austerity programme. PCS members and activists responded magnificently by re-signing the vast majority of our members to the union to pay their subscriptions by direct debit. However, we still lost a significant number of members and a significant amount of income as a result of the attack.

PCS has not taken this attack lying down. We have lodged a series of judicial review claims with the High Court against the offending departments. The basis of our claims is that, in removing checkoff, the employer breached our members contractual rights to it; and that PCS is entitled to claim third party damages as a result of the breach.

At a High Court hearing held on 3 March 2022 at the Royal Courts of Justice, Mr Justice Choudhury upheld our arguments. He declared that our members had a contractual right to checkoff; that in removing checkoff, the Home Office had breached our members contracts; and that PCS was entitled to redress.

This latest judgement fortifies previous judgements handed down in the High Court in respect of the then Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions. In both cases, the High Court upheld PCS's arguments that our members had a contractual right to checkoff.

The case against the Home Office will now proceed to a remedy hearing to determine the amount of damages that the Home Office must now pay PCS. We have a series of further claims against other government departments due to be heard by the High Court this year.

For each case that we win, the employer will pay our legal costs on top of any damages we secure. Rather than waste taxpayers money in this manner, PCS will be pressing the government to do the right thing and settle our claims out of court, thereby not incurring the legal costs.

The withdrawal of the checkoff facility was an attempt to destroy our union. We have beaten off this attack and we are now securing redress. PCS will continue to fight and campaign on behalf of our members undeterred by government threats and intimidation.

Mike Jones (Group Secretary)