Mr M Clifford v Millicom Services UK Limited and 3 others — 2025

The claimant, Mr Clifford, worked as a global investigations manager for Millicom Services UK Limited from January 2017 until his dismissal on 30 November 2019. The tribunal heard a detailed case about alleged protected disclosures, alleged whistleblowing detriments, ordinary and automatic unfair dismissal, and disability discrimination arising from a later eye condition. The respondents denied liability in full, and the tribunal unanimously dismissed all claims.

On the whistleblowing allegations, the tribunal examined six alleged protected disclosures. It accepted that Mr Clifford disclosed a number of factual matters in September 2017 about MIC Tanzania, including call data and live tracking for Mr Tundu Lissu, and it accepted some disclosures about the Seacliff incident, senior management concerns, CDR handling, and HR failings. However, it found that several of the pleaded matters were not actually disclosed, and in respect of the matters that were disclosed, Mr Clifford did not hold a reasonable belief that they tended to show the statutory wrongdoing required by s.43B ERA 1996. The tribunal repeatedly distinguished between suspicion and belief, and found that much of his evidence reflected retrospective linkage rather than his contemporaneous belief at the time.

The tribunal also rejected the whistleblowing detriment case, which covered a wide range of alleged treatment between April 2018 and November 2019. It found that the 13 April 2018 meeting allegation was not proven and was in any event about confidentiality concerns connected with the Ghana investigation rather than Sidley Austin. It found that complaints about a mid-year review, access to the Sidley Austin report, reduced verbal contact, failure to respond to reports, changes to line management, NAVEX access, performance rating, alleged exclusion from Hogan Lovells, short notice consultation, refusal to postpone consultation, and the redundancy process were either not made out on the facts or were explained by confidentiality, privilege, business restructuring, or ordinary management reasons. The tribunal also found that the dismissal was not because of any protected disclosure.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal found that Millicom was steadily exiting Africa and expanding in Latin America, that the London office was winding down, and that Mr Clifford’s work was effectively focused on Africa by late 2018 under Mr Dabbour’s budget. It accepted that the claimant’s role was no longer required and that the redundancy was genuine. The tribunal further found that consultation was adequate and meaningful: the claimant was warned, invited to meetings, given reasons, offered the opportunity to comment and to consider vacancies, and later had an appeal hearing. Even if a wider selection pool might have been arguable, the tribunal held that he would still have been dismissed for redundancy.