In person (written submissions from Mr C. Milsom, Counsel) v Respondent — 2024

This was a reserved preliminary hearing on jurisdiction under section 121 of the Equality Act 2010. Applying the non-technical approach in Edwards v MOD 2024, the tribunal read the claimant's service complaint as a whole and held that it was directed at Cdr CD's response to her reports, together with related OJAR and promotion issues, rather than at Lt KL personally. The tribunal relied on the claimant's own position at the 9 February 2022 admissibility meeting and in later correspondence that Lt KL was not the subject of her service complaint.

On that basis, the tribunal struck out claims that sought to challenge the service complaint machinery itself or to bring matters that had not been made the subject of a service complaint. It held that direct sex discrimination claims 1, 2, 3 and 9-12, harassment claims 1-10, and victimisation claim 4 were outside jurisdiction, principally because they fell within regulation 3(2) of the Armed Forces (Service Complaints Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2015 or were not matters raised in the service complaint. The tribunal also recorded that one direct discrimination claim concerning a chef was withdrawn, together with all pregnancy and maternity discrimination claims and all indirect discrimination claims.

The claims that remained in Annexe 2 were allowed to go forward to a final merits hearing, including direct sex discrimination claims 4-7 and 13-19 and victimisation claims 2, 3 and 5. The tribunal did not make any findings on liability for those claims at this stage; it only decided that they were within jurisdiction and could proceed. No remedy or compensation was awarded in this preliminary judgment.

The tribunal rejected the claimant's arguments based on Article 6 ECHR and EU law. It followed Molaudi v MOD and Edwards v MOD in holding that section 121 did not make access to the Employment Tribunal practically impossible for service personnel, and it concluded that the service complaints regime was not required to be disapplied in respect of the excluded matters. It noted that any challenge to the service complaint process itself lay through the service complaints and judicial review routes, not by re-litigating the excluded complaints in the Employment Tribunal.