Ms R Pasha v Home Office Heard by CVP on 29 and 30 June 2023 — 2022

Ms Pasha was dismissed by the Home Office on 17 February 2022 for misconduct arising from CRS look-ups and related information sharing. The tribunal found that she had made unauthorised look-ups of relatives and contacts over a number of years, including pre-2013 CRS searches, 2013 searches after the Home Office zero-tolerance message, 2015 searches concerning a colleague’s relatives, and 2017 searches involving the same subject matter. It also found that she had sent a 2010 email passing operational information to an old school friend at a Yahoo address, which the tribunal treated as wrong at the time.

The tribunal accepted that the Respondent had a genuine belief that Ms Pasha had committed gross misconduct and that, on the main issues, it had reasonable grounds for that belief. It held that the 2013 look-ups of her second husband’s relatives were not for a legitimate business reason and were an abuse of CRS. It also preferred the evidence of Mr Smith and Mr Edwards to Ms Pasha’s account on the 2015/2017 searches, concluding that those searches were unauthorised. The tribunal found that the 6 June 2013 zero-tolerance message had been sent and that the Respondent was entitled to treat the post-10 June 2013 conduct as serious misconduct.

There were procedural shortcomings. The investigation letter to the Claimant referred to June 2013 onwards, but the investigation report addressed pre-2013 matters as well. The decision manager also went beyond the investigator’s conclusion on the 2015/2017 searches by making his own further enquiries of Mr Smith and others. There were also delays in the investigation, some material was not disclosed to the Claimant before the dismissal and appeal decisions, and comparator arguments were raised only in general terms. The tribunal found these defects but concluded that, taken individually and together, they did not have a material impact on the outcome.

The tribunal accepted that Ms Pasha had mitigation, including long service, a previously clean disciplinary record, domestic difficulties and mental health issues. It found that these matters were considered by the decision maker and on appeal, but did not make dismissal unfair. Applying section 98(4) ERA 1996 and the range of reasonable responses approach, the tribunal held that summary dismissal was open to the Respondent in light of the repeated CRS breaches and the Home Office’s zero-tolerance policy. The unfair dismissal claim was therefore dismissed, and the tribunal recorded that if it had been wrong on liability it would have reduced any basic and compensatory awards to nil for contributory fault.