Ms A. Rehman v Healthbridge Direct — 2022

Ms A. Rehman started work for Healthbridge Direct on 6 December 2019 as a bank worker and later took a fixed-term out-of-hours supervisory role. The tribunal considered a series of alleged protected disclosures made during the early Covid-19 period and applied the statutory tests in s.43B ERA 1996, together with the authorities it cited on disclosure of information, public interest, and reasonable belief.

The tribunal held that only Disclosure 19, an email of 29 March 2020 about prescriptions and patients trying to locate them, amounted to a protected public interest disclosure. It found that the Claimant had in mind a concern that patients were unable to locate their prescriptions and reasonably believed the information tended to show that patient health might be endangered. The other incident reports, emails and telephone calls relied on by the Claimant were not protected disclosures because the tribunal found that she either did not subjectively hold the pleaded beliefs about legal obligation or health and safety, or that any such belief was not reasonable.

On dismissal, the tribunal found that the Respondent’s workload had fallen sharply during lockdown, several hubs had closed, 111 and GP shifts had reduced, and there was no longer a need for a dedicated evening supervisor. It held that the Claimant was dismissed for redundancy on 19 April 2020, within s.139 ERA 1996, and that redundancy was the sole reason for dismissal. The tribunal rejected the submission that the dismissal was caused by whistleblowing, and said that any concern about the Claimant’s communications was at most a subsidiary factor and was unconnected to the one protected disclosure it had found. The automatic unfair dismissal claim under s.103A ERA 1996 was therefore dismissed and no monetary award was made.