Entire agreement clauses

Royal National Lifeboat Institution v The Bushaway (2005) IRLR 674; LSG 6 October

A written agreement between an employment agency and a worker described her as a temporary worker engaged under a contract for services. The contract included an ‘entire agreement clause’ providing that the document contained ‘the whole agreement between the parties and any amendment to it should be in writing’. Nevertheless, an employment tribunal was entitled to go behind the written agreement and look at the reality of the situation where it was clear that the agreement did not in fact reflect and contain the entire bargain between the parties. There were marked inconsistencies between the provisions of the written agreement and an earlier letter to the claimant from the agency, setting out the terms of her engagement, for example, with regard to the duty to work and the amount and by whom she would be paid. It was not appropriate to say that the claimant could not be an employee of the company for whom she actually worked because she was being paid by the agency The fact that payment was made by an agent for the employer did not mean that she was not being paid by the employer.