Mr M Locke v Begbies Traynor (SY) LLP and 4 others — 2022

The claimant, a long-serving insolvency practitioner, relied on a series of alleged disclosures concerning a £300 payment said to have been made to an investigator in relation to a bankrupt, together with allegations of blackmail, bribery, failure to report wrongdoing, and a supposed sham redundancy. The tribunal found that on 11 October 2017 he did disclose information to Paul Howarth about the £300 issue, and that he reasonably believed the facts he was imparting tended to show a criminal offence had been committed and that this was in the public interest. It did not accept, however, that the call clearly included a disclosure about a failure to report the matter. The tribunal applied the Cavendish Munro/Kilraine line on disclosure of information and the Chesterton Global public-interest approach when analysing the statutory test.

At the 23 October 2017 redundancy meeting, the claimant repeated the £300 allegation and said the timing of the redundancy process suggested a sham response to what he had told Paul Howarth. The tribunal found those remarks were protected disclosures. It also held that the claimant's detailed email of 27 June 2018 to John Humphrey, which attached material about the 2013 meeting, was a protected disclosure, and that the later 13 July 2018 email was also protected. In its whistleblowing analysis the tribunal referred to the statutory scheme in sections 43A to 43C ERA 1996, the reasonableness of belief under section 43B, and the burden and causation approach discussed in Kuzel and Fecitt.

The tribunal rejected the case that the redundancy process, the contract correspondence, the transcript issues, and the office email of 13 July 2018 were all prompted by whistleblowing. It accepted the respondents' evidence that they were concerned the claimant's work would diminish because he had been telling people he was looking to leave, and relied on his own 16 August 2017 email and later communications in which he said he had little work and was on the job market. It found that being placed at risk of redundancy was a detriment, but that the continuation of that risk until 25 January 2018 was not. It also found that the delay and back-and-forth about the draft contract were genuine negotiations rather than retaliatory treatment.

The tribunal held that only parts of John Humphrey's 6 July 2018 letter were capable of being a detriment, because some of the wording was more robust than necessary, but it accepted that he was genuinely trying to work out whether the claimant was making a whistleblowing disclosure, an MLRO report, or a grievance. It found no causal link between the protected disclosures and the treatment complained of. It rejected the suggestion that the 13 July 2018 office email about the bankrupt's social media activity was aimed at the claimant or was a hidden response to his disclosures, and rejected the claim that the respondent had deliberately mishandled or suppressed the recording of the 23 October 2017 meeting.