Mr J Wynne (Counsel) For the v Respondent — 2023

Mr Alles worked for R1, a small family company, and the tribunal found that from around 2019 he accessed and scanned documents from a locked cupboard in what had been PB Bhardwaj's office and sent a number of documents to Vibhuti Sharma in support of her dispute with R2. The tribunal found that the six documents that drove the disciplinary process were not his, were not related to his work for R1, and that he knew this when he scanned and sent them. It accepted that he believed he was helping Vibhuti pursue what he saw as PB's wishes, but not that he was acting within his role for R1 or that the documents belonged to the wider family.

The protected disclosure claims failed. On the Letter of Wishes and Sunflag material, the tribunal accepted that Mr Alles believed some matters might suggest a failure to comply with legal obligations, but it found that he did not believe there was a criminal offence, did not make the disclosure in the public interest, did not make it to his employer, and did not satisfy the section 43G gateway. It also found that the Sunflag email was not one of the documents relied on by the respondents and was not known to the people involved in the disciplinary process. The disclosure made to Ms Heales on 9 December 2021 likewise did not amount to a protected disclosure because, although it could be seen as alleging a failure to implement wishes, the tribunal found it was not made in the public interest.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal accepted that conduct was the potentially fair reason and that the key reason for dismissal was the breakdown of trust and confidence caused by Mr Alles taking documents from his workplace and supplying them to Vibhuti for use against R2. It criticised parts of the process, including the failure to provide the documents for the first investigation meeting, the late raising of the data-protection point, the weakness of the investigation report, and SBB's limited engagement with the final decision. Even so, it held that the core dismissal decision fell within the range of reasonable responses and dismissed the s98 claim. The tribunal therefore dismissed the s103A automatically unfair dismissal claim and the s47B detriment claim, and it said that if it had been wrong on liability any award would have been reduced by 100% for contribution. The s1 written particulars claim also failed, so no monetary award was made.