Mr M Robson v British Airways Pension Services Limited — 2025

The claimant worked for British Airways Pension Services Limited as an Investment Specialist from 1 June 2020 until his dismissal on 1 December 2022. The tribunal found that the first alleged protected disclosure, contained in the 5 August 2022 grievance, was a disclosure of information but was not made in the public interest. It was framed as a dispute about his own employment, redundancy and alleged TUPE rights, and the tribunal held that the fact the employer ran major pension schemes was not enough to turn this private employment dispute into a qualifying public-interest disclosure.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant's emails on 12 August 2022 about the apparent availability of confidential staff data were protected disclosures. He had complained that the company was required to protect employees' personal data under GDPR and had asked that the alleged breach be reported and notified to the ICO. However, the tribunal held that the later grievance handling, IT investigation, disciplinary investigation and suspension were driven by the respondent's concerns about the claimant's own conduct in repeatedly accessing and copying the data, and then by the later discovery that he had emailed the BlackRock presentation to his personal email account. Those actions were not found to have been taken on the ground that he had made the protected disclosure.

The tribunal therefore rejected the whistleblowing detriment claim and the automatic unfair dismissal claim under s.103A ERA 1996. It also rejected the argument that the claimant would have been dismissed for improper use of concessionary flights during sickness absence, finding that he had been given permission to use them.

On ordinary unfair dismissal, the tribunal accepted that the reason for dismissal was conduct, but held that the dismissal was unfair because the decision-maker treated the claimant's failure to volunteer that he would not repeat the misconduct as decisive, even though he had not been asked that question. The appeal did not cure that defect. The tribunal found that, had a fair process been followed, the claimant would have remained employed for six further weeks and then been fairly dismissed with notice for redundancy. It reduced both the basic award and the compensatory award by 50% for the claimant's conduct and contributory fault, but no final monetary award was quantified in this liability judgment.