Case 1306630/2023 · Employment Tribunal

Mr X v Ministry of Defence — 2025

Case reference: 1306630/2023
Decision date: 22 August 2025
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge Bansal Representation

Indexed: 18 May 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

Mr X

Respondent

Ministry of Defence

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

This was a reserved public preliminary judgment concerning jurisdictional issues in claims brought by a former member of the armed forces. The claimant brought complaints including race discrimination, harassment related to race, victimisation, disability discrimination, failure to make reasonable adjustments and unpaid holiday pay. The respondent argued that disability discrimination claims relating to service in the armed forces were excluded by Schedule 9 paragraph 4(3) of the Equality Act 2010, and that some other complaints had not been raised in valid service complaints as required by section 121 of the Equality Act 2010.

The tribunal dismissed the disability discrimination complaint under Schedule 9 paragraph 4(3). It also dismissed allegations 8, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54 and 56 after considering whether the substance of the service complaints corresponded to the pleaded tribunal allegations and whether they could reasonably be read as complaints of race discrimination, harassment or victimisation.

Only allegation 42 was permitted to proceed. The judgment was a preliminary decision and did not record any award of compensation or other monetary remedy.

Claims and outcomes

5 findings recorded

This case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Disability discrimination	The preliminary judgment dismissed the complaint of disability discrimination pursuant to Schedule 9 paragraph 4(3) of the Equality Act 2010.	Dismissed	Disability	—
Race discrimination	Allegations 8, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54 and 56 included direct race discrimination complaints and were dismissed at the public preliminary hearing because the tribunal found they had not been raised in a valid service complaint or could not reasonably be read as race discrimination complaints.	Dismissed	Race	—
Victimisation	Allegations including 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 53 and 56 included victimisation complaints and were dismissed at the public preliminary hearing because the tribunal found they had not been raised in a valid service complaint or could not reasonably be read as victimisation complaints.	Dismissed	—	—
Harassment	Allegation 56 was pleaded as race-related harassment as well as direct race discrimination and victimisation. It was dismissed because the tribunal found the service complaint did not raise the closure of the disciplinary process as discriminatory.	Dismissed	Race	—
Race discrimination	The judgment stated that only allegation 42 was permitted to proceed. The truncated prompt text does not include the full terms of allegation 42, so no merits outcome is recorded.

Legal tests applied

6 references

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.

Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How we got this data

Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.

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