Sex discrimination: Award of £20,000 for injury to feelings upheld

In HM Prison Service v Salmon [2001] IRLR 425, the EAT upholds an award of £20,000 for injury to feelings, including £5,000 aggravated damages, and a separate, undiscounted award of £15,000 for psychiatric injury, made by an employment tribunal that had partially upheld a former prison officer's complaint of unlawful sex discrimination. Neither award was so high as to be perverse and no double counting occurred. The EAT also upholds the 25% discount that the tribunal made to the award for psychiatric injury, based on its inevitably very broad assessment of the extent to which the unlawful acts of discrimination caused the depressive illness from which the complainant was suffering.