Respondents lawyer acting as warned against me in disciplinary?

[Chambertin]

Respondents lawyer in my Employment Tribunal case is participating as a witness in a disciplinary against me based on info I disclosed to the tribunal in my ET.

This feels highly improper and I would appreciate your thoughts but I know you’ll want some more detail first.

i took my employer - a large government department - to Employment Tribunal based on harassment, discrimination and knowing deception related to Diversity and Inclusion.

this included things like the RAF discrimination vs 160 prospective pilots based on their race and gender, the circulation of materials likely to incite racial hatred as part of a department wide mandatory D&I Training day (namely the ‘academic’ paper The Psychosis of Whiteness). As part of the same mandatory Training day everyone in the department was forced to watch video vignettes where people recounted their experiences of discrimination. All of the videos except one were performed by actors. The one which wasn’t performed by a professional actor was hammy and unconvincing. The vignettes gave one sided accounts amounting to little more than allegations, presented as the artificially elevated ‘Lived Experience’.

I work in the departments Litigation section. Upon viewing these videos along with a raft of other D&I materials I took exception. I took exception to being forced into watching someone’s allegation and being told how to feel about it. The assumption was that the allegations were legitimate and as described.

In any case, knowing that my employer shouldn’t be running these types of Psy Ops on staff I wrote to the Minister for Equalities to let her know about the vignette in question and to alert her to the presence of The Psychosis of Whiteness paper being circulated around our department.

This email was rerouted back to the department for a response.

In their response, the department told me that the story told in the vignette was subject to an internal complaint and that that complaint was upheld.

i raised an employment tribunal anyway and included the mandatory training day which contained unsubstantiated allegations and hate filled academic papers and fraudulent ‘research’ into the Lived Experience.

Two months later, the person who was the subject of the vignette submitted an employment tribunal complaint himself which was received by my department. In that complaint it was disclosed that the video in question which we were all forced to watch and told how to feel about was indeed investigated previously but no wrongdoing was found. His complaint was NOT upheld, contrary to what I was told by the department via a response to concerns I raised to the minister for equalities.

So, my concerns with this are now twofold - 1 that the department are KNOWINGLY deceiving staff by forcing them to watch allegations of discrimination which have already been established to be unfounded and false and telling us HOW TO FEEL ABOUT THEM and 2 that the department would directly lie to me about the veracity of the claims, which I only found out about because of the job I’m in.

The reason this soldier submitted an ET claim was because he was the subject of a related complaint. The person who had been originally accused (and cleared of) of discrimination by the person who made the video obviously SAW the video (having been forced to watch it), recognised the fella, recognised the scenario he was describing and was aghast that he was being allowed to repeat his ill founded allegations which had already been investigated and determined two years previously. He was aghast that this accusation was being given the wisest possible dissemination (remember, we were all MANDATED to watch this nonsense) as it could easily identify him as the person referred to.

This guy won his complaint but the redress he requested wasn’t granted. He wanted something put on the intranet correcting the record but instead the deciding officer took the decision to destroy all the evidence of the video and NOT to disabuse people of their false impressions.

We’re talking something like over 100k Personnel here who were forced to watch that.

Anyway, I used that knowledge which I only had through working in the Litigation section to provide more detail to my claims. I was already complaining about this matter anyway but now I can show that a) the department told me a bold faced lie when I queried the video originally, b) rather than just suspecting it was bullshit propaganda I can now confirm it and c) the department destroyed evidence of wrongdoing rather than correct the false impression they forced EVERYONE to adopt.

And now I am being disciplined for ‘using privileged information for personal gain’ (even though I requested no financial redress whatsoever and would have refused any offered), also for breaches to GDPR, DPA. The investigator said that my disclosures aren’t protected disclosures because I didn’t declare them to be so (even though that is NOT a criteria according to PIDA) and he has as witnesses against me the lawyer who defended the department against my claim and the person who responded on behalf of the department to me and told me lies about the complaint being upheld.

This feels completely improper and I feel I’m being victimised for raising an ET but I’d be grateful for any thoughts

[ULA]

The disciplinary would have set out the allegations against you and it is against those that you need to prepare your defence for the disciplinary meeting specifically. Generally, if you feel that the way the disciplinary has come about is as a result of you making an ET claim and you are being victimised, then you can set that out in a statement at the meeting.

[Chambertin]

Thanks ULA. I will do. Do you have any thoughts on the respondents later in the ET acting as a witness against me in the disciplinary?

[ULA]

I presume that whoever have been asked to be a witness has provided a statement which have been provided to you in advance of the disciplinary.

Normally witnesses would be other internal employees who have relevant information for the disciplinary matter, however I have know that in more unusual or complex cases, of which these seems to be one, relevant witnesses can also be a third party.

[Chambertin]

cheers ULA. A third party, yes. But have you ever heard of the Respondents lawyer in the ET acting as a witness against the Claimant in a retaliatory disciplinary?

[ULA]

As you are asking me personally whether I heard of such a situation then no I have not.

[echat11]

cheers ULA. A third party, yes. But have you ever heard of the Respondents lawyer in the ET acting as a witness against the Claimant in a retaliatory disciplinary?

Sounds like a type of 'conflict of interest' situation, solicitors have an ethics code that they have to follow, this is the type of situation that they should avoid.

They are there to do the best for their client, but being a Witness against you might be stepping over the mark, regardless of what evidence they can provide.

https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/st...ct-solicitors/

[atticus]

I am going to disagree. I cannot see a conflict of interests if the solicitors are not representing the employer in the disciplinary process.

I assume that the evidence to be given will be what the OP said in the Tribunal. Can the OP please clarify, and state whether he disagrees with this solicitor's evidence.

[dslippy]

If the evidence is purely as to factual matters, there need be no conflict. The possible range of circumstances may be so wide as to make any general answer unhelpful.

[Chambertin]

Hi there all,

in the run up to my Tribunal the solicitor contacted a manager in my team to complain that I was using my companies IT (ie my work email address) to pass him my supplementary bundle. Given that my evidence comes from company systems etc the only other way around this would be to breach security protocols by emailing it from my work account to my personal account and then onto him. I asked if he could set up an Egress account so I could pass him my evidence but he refused.

He admitted he doesn't know the policy of our company around such things so this was a speculative stab at getting me in trouble and that too forms part of the discplinary against me - using company IT to process information relating to my personal claim against my Employer.

This lawyers witness statement against me also recounts how I asked for disclosure of the documentation relating to those complaints I mentioned which would provide proof to the Tribunal of the fraudulent nature of the original vignette and that he raised this request for disclosure with my 2 up (who was also a witness for the Respondent in the ET). His statement then goes on to address whether or not my disclosure of information concerning the outcomes of those complaints amounted to a Protected Disclosure and gave his opinion that it does NOT amount to a protected disclosure because I didn't state that I was making a Protected Disclosure. He gives his opinion that I seemed to be using my professional position which granted access to those complaints to enhance my own case against my employer.

For the record, I made my initial disclosure to the Minister for Equalities highlighting my concerns about the veracity of the original vignettes amongst other things. That correspondence was redirected back to my employer from the Ministers office for a response. They responded to me through official correspondence where they told me that the vignettes were matters which had been upheld via internal complaints. A few months after I received that correspondence from my employer we received the complaint into our team which showed me that the original complaint was not in fact upheld, contrary to what my employer told me when I queried it, making both the original video and the response to it false representations. Furthermore, the other complaint about the video WAS upheld, however, the decision in that instance ordered that no correction be made (even though over 100k people were mislead by this video) and that the original video be destroyed.

Based on this knowledge which I did acquire solely by virtue of where I work I included it in my Tribunal claim which I am now in trouble for.

The charges laid by the investigating officer are that I:

1. Knowingly abused his position by using information he acquired in the course of his official duties to further his private ET case.
2. Attempted to disclose official information in relation to cases which did not involve him without authority.
3. Failed to comply with the law (DPA 18) by attempting to use the personal cases of others in support of his own ET case.
4. Repeatedly used Department equipment in support of his personal ET case

My thoughts on these charges in turn are:

1. It's not an abuse of my position to blow the whistle on wrongdoing by my employer and you can only blow the whistle by using knowledge acquired during the course of your duties anyway. Also, what on earth is a 'private' ET case?
2. Those cases DID involve me - my employer saw to that by FORCING me and everyone else to watch a video detailing the substance of the complaint and telling us how to feel about it. My employer ensured that I was personally invested in this and so I took the view that it can face the consequences of it's wilful deception by having it exposed and held to account for.
3. I don't consider that these are personal cases - these matters were mandated viewing for all staff. Their individual complaints might nominally be personal matters but their substance was Department-wide mandatory viewing.
4. If it is an offence to collect evidence from company systems then how on earth is anyone supposed to bring any evidence at all?