Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Today, in the Lefevre HR and Employment Law podcast, we're discussing an employment tribunal judgment in the whistleblowing case of Stewart and Foreign Commonwealth Development Office. Listeners may well remember a news expose a number of years ago about the evacuation of Kabul, and particularly about animals being prioritised for evacuation over people. This case was brought by a civil servant who secretly participated in that expose. In spring 2021, When the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan began, the UK government adopted a policy designed to enable Afghan citizens working for the UK in exposed roles to relocate to the UK for their protection. The civil servant in question volunteered to work in the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office's crisis centre to help with the evacuation. After the evacuation efforts ended, another whistleblower spoke publicly about his concerns regarding the evacuation. The first whistleblower resigned a few weeks after speaking out. and later gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee saying that the evacuation was chaotic and mismanaged. Allegations were also made that the evacuation of animals in the care of a charity whose cause had been widely publicised had been prioritised over evacuating people. This led to increased press scrutiny, and both the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary publicly rejected the first whistleblower's claims. Against this backdrop, The civil servant secretly gave an anonymous interview to the BBC corroborating much of the first whistleblower's evidence. She confirmed that the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office's response had been chaotic and that huge amounts of trauma and suffering stemmed from the way it was handled and that most probably people likely died as a result. The civil servant later provided the BBC with internal Foreign Commonwealth Development Office emails. After the civil servant's identity was mistakenly revealed online. She was immediately suspended from work and had her security clearance revoked. She was then dismissed as all Foreign Commonwealth Development Office staff require security clearance. After her dismissal, the civil servant brought whistleblowing and unfair dismissal claims against her former employer. The Employment Tribunal partly upheld these claims, finding that her BBC interview amounted to a qualifying protected disclosure and that it had been reasonable for her to go to the BBC. given that the relevant information had already been put into the public domain by the first whistleblower, and given that government ministers were denying the accuracy of that initial account. It did not accept, however, that the leaking of the emails to the BBC was a qualifying disclosure, and no protection was afforded in relation to that. Given the civil servant had made protected disclosures, the withdrawal of her security clearance was an act of victimisation, as it had been motivated by her having made those disclosures. The tribunal also found that the civil servant's dismissal was ordinarily unfair, but it did not find it to be automatically unfair, as it did not accept that the disclosure was the primary reason for her dismissal. It further found that the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office had failed to acknowledge that the civil servant was entitled to protection as a whistleblower, and had acted unreasonably in dismissing her without considering whether she could continue to be employed without security clearance. Look out for further episodes in this series to stay up to date on all things HR and employment law related.