In Person For the v Ms Yve Montaz, (Advocate) — 2023

The claimant, M Payne, brought claims on 23 March 2023 including unfair dismissal, automatically unfair dismissal for making a protected disclosure, and protected disclosure detriment. This hearing on 9 May 2023 was limited to the interim relief application. The tribunal applied the summary predictive exercise required by ss.128-129 ERA 1996 and decided not to hear oral evidence under rule 95.

The claimant said he made the same disclosure on 8 December 2022, 19 January 2023 and 25 January 2023 to senior managers, concerning what he described as concealment of information and collusion in a GSK Commercial deal, including improper costs and a concealed 10% discount. The tribunal accepted that it was likely the disclosures were disclosures of information rather than mere allegations, but held that the claimant had not shown a reasonable belief that they tended to show one of the matters in s.43B ERA 1996.

The tribunal went on to consider causation and redundancy. It held that on the material available it was not likely that a final tribunal would find the redundancy process was a sham. The respondent relied on a downturn in responding to multi-faceted bids and said the role had become surplus to requirement; the claimant also accepted in submissions that the role for which he had been recruited was never really available or undertaken by him. The tribunal therefore refused interim relief and dismissed the application. It noted that interim relief is not available where dismissal is by reason of redundancy even if selection for redundancy is said to have been because of a protected disclosure, and the case was to be listed for a case management preliminary hearing.