In recent months, courtroom sagas such as those involving Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, Naomi Campbell and Jamie Theakston have rekindled the ever-contentious debate about the rights public figures have to respect for their private and family life. While these cases may seem worlds apart from our own daily lives, issues of privacy and intrusion are equally important, and increasingly contentious, in a very familiar arena – the workplace.
The essence of debate
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights confers a “right to respect” for private and family life, home and correspondence. This protection is just as valid in the workplace as elsewhere. In Halford v United Kingdom [1997] IRLR 471, Alison Halford, former Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, brought sex discrimination proceedings against her employer. During those proceedings it emerged that her employer had tapped her private work telephone.
