Mr M Wynne-Jones, counsel For the v Respondent — 2022

The claimant, employed by the first respondent since 2006 and relocated to Paddington after earlier litigation and a COT3 settlement, presented this 2022 claim alleging whistleblowing detriment, victimisation and unlawful deductions from wages. The preliminary hearing concerned only whether the pay-related whistleblowing and victimisation complaints should be struck out because they ought to have been raised in the claimant’s earlier 2018 proceedings. The tribunal recorded that the unlawful deduction from wages claim was not part of the application and would continue.

The tribunal found that when the claimant returned to work in March 2014 he was not focussed on pay, but by March 2015 he knew he was being paid over £4,000 less than he had been before his reinstatement and relocation. It further found that by November 2020 he knew he was paid less than Mr Assad, and that in his supplementary witness statement for the 2018 case he described the discrepancy as potentially significant and relevant to that claim. The tribunal rejected any suggestion that the later explanation about GO1 and GO2 grading prevented him from bringing the issue earlier.

Applying Henderson v Henderson, Johnson v Gore Wood, James v Public Health Wales NHS Trust and London Borough of Haringey v O'Brien, the tribunal held that the pay-related whistleblowing detriment and victimisation complaints properly belonged in case number 2207012/2018. Because the claimant was legally represented and had time to amend the earlier claim, the tribunal concluded that allowing fresh proceedings would require revisiting the same disclosures and causation issues and would amount to an abuse of process. The decision was that the pay-related whistleblowing detriment and victimisation claims were struck out, while the remaining claims proceeded to a full merits hearing.