I was interested to recently read that a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent has submitted a claim in the Employment Tribunal for disability discrimination.
The contestant alleges that she has a medical condition which causes head and shoulder pain and which in turn affects her ability to hear her own singing voice in noisy environments, such as the audition venue.
She did not perform very well in the audition and was ‘buzzed’ by the three judges. She told them that the backing track was too loud and she was not used to the microphone provided. With his usual acerbic wit, Simon Cowell responded "…reality check here, it’s not the music, it’s not the microphone, it’s you".
She claims that she later performed competently on the spin off show on ITV2, proving that she could sing, and that she had been led to believe the two programmes would be linked when eventually broadcast. Instead, she feels that she was made a mockery of by the programme, and that her audition was affected by her medical condition, which she considers to be a disability.
Assuming the contestant can show that she is disabled as per the specific definition contained in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), the first question that came to my mind when reading the article was whether the Employment Tribunal would have jurisdiction to hear such a claim. This would depend on the nature of the relationship between the contestant and the show makers.
The DDA provides protection in the employment field, as well as in the provision of goods, facilities and services. It seems the contestant is alleging that Britain’s Got Talent can be considered her employer (or prospective employer) for the purposes of bringing a claim because the auditions were a process of elimination in which candidates competed for short term employment contracts for a road show. In my view, fairly creative and sophisticated legal arguments will be required to argue this point and I am not convinced it will be successful.
If she can overcome this fairly big stumbling block, she may be able to argue that there was a failure to make reasonable adjustments (for example, by lowering the backing track or providing a different microphone). She could also attempt to argue that the general treatment she received amounts to disability harassment. To argue this, she would need to show that she was subjected to unwanted conduct for a reason relating to her disability which had the purpose or effect of violating her dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
I am not confident of this claim progressing very far but I would certainly be interested in seeing Simon Cowell giving evidence and being kept in check by an Employment Judge!
