Ms A McCormick v BusinessF1 Magazine Limited — 2021

This was a remote paper hearing on the claimant’s application for interim relief. The claimant said she and others raised Covid-19 health and safety concerns from around 22 December 2020, including concerns said to have been raised on 5, 10 and 11 January 2021. The respondent terminated her employment by letter dated 29 January 2021, relying on a contractual special notice clause relating to Covid. The tribunal recorded that the claimant’s case was that she had made protected disclosures and that the reason, or principal reason, for dismissal was those disclosures.

The tribunal set out the statutory test under ss.128 and 129 Employment Rights Act 1996 and referred to the authorities in Cavendish Munro, Kilraine, London City Airport Limited v Chacko and Taplin v C Shippam Ltd. It said it had to make an expeditious summary assessment on the material available and decide whether it was likely that the final tribunal would find that the dismissal was for protected disclosures. It also noted that a disclosure must contain sufficient factual content to amount to information, and that some of the concerns appeared to have been raised by others rather than the claimant herself.

The tribunal refused interim relief because it could not say at this stage that the claimant had a significantly higher than probable chance of establishing that she made protected disclosures and that dismissal was for that reason. It stated that the claimant had not shown that the statutory threshold was met on the material before it. The tribunal also noted that, because the claimant did not have two years’ service for ordinary unfair dismissal, she would need to prove that the dismissal was for an automatically unfair reason at the full hearing. No monetary remedy was awarded in this judgment.