Mr Mohammed Rahman v The Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — 2020

The claimant was summarily dismissed after HMRC concluded that he had deliberately used competency examples written by a colleague in an application for a Senior Response Officer role. He accepted that the examples were not his own but said their inclusion was an inadvertent cut and paste error, and relied on his prior performance, withdrawn applications, personal pressures, and criticisms of the investigation and procedure.

The tribunal found that HMRC had shown conduct as the potentially fair reason for dismissal. It accepted that the dismissing manager genuinely believed the claimant had deliberately used the colleague's examples and found that the investigation and appeal process were reasonable overall. The tribunal considered the failure to interview two further colleagues but found it was reasonable not to pursue that point further, given the claimant's admissions about embellishing his own examples and the peripheral nature of that issue.

The tribunal held that there were reasonable grounds for HMRC's belief, including the repeated use of the colleague's examples across the application and other withdrawn applications. It found the decision to dismiss was within the band of reasonable responses, given the importance of trust and integrity in the claimant's role, and dismissed the unfair dismissal claim.