In Person For the v Respondent — 2023

The tribunal accepted that Carnival UK had a genuine redundancy situation in the wake of the Covid-19 impact on the cruise business, and that the claimant, Ms Laura Hunter, was within the protected period because she had started maternity leave on 6 April 2020. The claimant was included in a pool of team leaders, with the process intended to reduce 21 team leader roles to 16, and she was ultimately selected for redundancy and dismissed with an effective date of 30 June 2020.

The tribunal found that the scoring and calibration exercise was not wholly objective. It noted inconsistencies in the scoring records, including changes to the claimant’s development programme score, and concluded that there had been moderation affecting several individuals. It also found that the claimant was disadvantaged because she was absent on maternity leave and therefore could not demonstrate recent performance in the same way as colleagues who were working, while the managers applying the scores did not properly take account of that disadvantage. The tribunal did not find conscious or unconscious prejudice, but it did find that subjective judgments affected the scoring process.

On ordinary unfair dismissal, the tribunal held that the redundancy dismissal was unfair because the respondent did not operate a sufficiently objective selection process and did not take all reasonable steps to avoid dismissal. It found that the respondent should have considered delaying the claimant’s dismissal until the end of maternity leave, as had been done for another woman, and that the claimant’s long service and wider experience were relevant factors that should have been considered. The tribunal therefore upheld the ordinary unfair dismissal claim.

On the automatic unfair dismissal issue under the MAPLE Regulations 1999, the tribunal held that once all team leaders were placed at risk and the respondent was seeking to fill 15 or 16 interchangeable team leader posts, any one of those posts was a suitable alternative vacancy for the claimant. It found that regulation 10 required her to be offered one of those vacancies before her existing contract ended, and that failing to do so made the dismissal automatically unfair. In the alternative, it found that the principal reason for dismissal was connected with the claimant’s maternity leave.

The pregnancy and maternity discrimination claim was dismissed. The tribunal accepted that the claimant was treated unfavourably during the protected period, but held that it could not conclude that the reason for the treatment was pregnancy or maternity leave itself. It found instead that the low scores were a consequence of her absence from work and the way the scoring process was applied, rather than discrimination because of pregnancy or maternity leave.

The respondent was ordered to pay £13,248.52, made up of £11,091.04 for loss of earnings, £1,657.48 for pension loss, and £500 for loss of statutory rights. The tribunal recorded that the recoupment regulations applied, that the prescribed element was £13,248.52, and that there was no difference between the prescribed element and the total award.