Mrs R Taylor, lay representative For the v Respondent — 2020

The claimant, Mrs R Taylor-Hamieh, was employed by The Ritz Hotel Casino Ltd as a customer relations host from 2016. In late 2018 the respondent decided to delete the customer relations host roles and create a Business Development Manager Middle East role. The claimant told the respondent on 31 December 2018 that she was pregnant. On 4 February 2019 she and Tarik Sheriff were told they were at risk of redundancy, and both applied for the new role.

The tribunal found that the selection process for the BDM Middle East role was materially affected by the claimant’s sex and pregnancy. It accepted that Mr Marris had said in 2016 that he did not think it would be appropriate for a female employee to travel to the Middle East on her own, and found that no women had travelled there during the claimant’s employment. It also found that the process changed on 4 March 2019 from the more structured interview exercise previously used to an unannounced further interview with no proper scoring record, no contemporaneous explanation for rejecting the claimant, and inconsistent reasons from Mr Marvin for preferring Mr Sheriff. The claims of direct sex discrimination and pregnancy/maternity discrimination were upheld.

On the dismissal claim, the tribunal accepted that there was a redundancy situation and held that redundancy remained the principal reason for dismissal, so the s.99 pregnancy-dismissal issue was not made out. It nevertheless held that the dismissal was unfair under s.98(4) ERA 1996 because the redeployment and selection process for the BDM Middle East role was not reasonable, including the lack of a fair and coherent interview process and the discriminatory taint in the selection.

The post-employment victimisation claim succeeded. The tribunal found that the claimant did a protected act on 8 February 2019 when she raised concerns that the redundancy and the BDM selection were connected to pregnancy and sex, and that the letter sent by Mr Marris on 7 March 2019 alleging breach of confidentiality was a detriment sent because of that protected act. The post-employment harassment claim related to sex was not upheld.

Remedy was not determined in this judgment. The tribunal recorded that, absent unlawful discrimination and unfair dismissal, there was a 50% chance the claimant would have been appointed to the BDM Middle East role and therefore would not have been dismissed, and it listed a later hearing for remedy.