Mr P Bhaskar v North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust — 2025

The tribunal accepted the claimant as broadly credible and was critical of gaps in the respondent's evidence. The case arose from a long-running dispute in the Surgery and Urology directorate between Mr Bhaskar, an Indian-origin consultant and former Guardian of Safe Working, and MK, an associate specialist doctor who had repeatedly raised concerns about consultants' patient cases. The tribunal found that MK had selected consultants by race when compiling patient lists, beginning with 25 cases in 2017, then 44 cases in 2019, and later around 15-20 cases in 2023, and that the respondent repeatedly investigated those lists even though its own reviews found no substantial clinical concerns.

It upheld harassment related to race for the 11 May 2018 meeting at which CT and DD disclosed the claimant's identity to colleagues as one of the consultants whose cases were to be investigated. It also upheld direct race discrimination for the Trust's failure to act on the claimant's 14 May 2018 GOSW report about MK, and for the 9 October 2018 interview in which the claimant said MK was selectively reporting incidents by race but the investigation team ignored that complaint. The tribunal treated those failures as part of a broader pattern of refusing to entertain the claimant's race discrimination complaint.

Direct race discrimination was also upheld for SP's failure in December 2019 to take any recommendation or revert to the claimant after he said MK was framing him, and for the Trust's failure to investigate the 15 patient cases listed in the claimant's January 2022 grievance. The tribunal then upheld direct race discrimination for withholding Liz Blount's grievance report until September 2022, and for the chief executive's inadequate response to the claimant's 13 June 2023 email. It treated the upheld complaints as part of a continuing state of affairs and extended time for the older acts under s.123 EqA 2010.

Victimisation succeeded in relation to the October 2021 conversation in which DD told the claimant that if he submitted a race discrimination grievance he could not hold the GOSW role and should step down, which the tribunal found was a detriment because he had done or might do a protected act. Harassment related to race also succeeded for MK's November 2021 and June 2022 conversations with the claimant's secretary, and for his GMC referrals in October 2021 and May 2022. The tribunal held that those GMC referrals did not attract judicial proceedings immunity, but that a later false statement to the GMC did.

The tribunal dismissed the allegations about the 18 September 2018 email, the January and February 2022 stress risk assessment and theatre relocation, junior support, the 15 February 2022 request, the award category, the WhatsApp group, the information-governance complaint, and several other pleaded matters, generally because it found no causal link to race or no qualifying detriment. This was a liability judgment only, so no remedy was assessed.