Supreme Court grants permission to appeal in Royal Mail Ltd v Jhuti

From the Court’s permission to appeal results for March and April 2018

https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/permission-to-appeal-2018-0304.pdf

... for more details of the Court of Appeal case see the rightsnet summary.

Supreme Court unanimously allows appeal by Ms Jhuti who was dismissed for whistleblowing. Following the whistleblowing her line manager had pretended her performance was inadequate and created a false picture of her performance causing a different employee to make the decision to dismiss her.

Key question of law -

‘in a claim for unfair dismissal under Part X of the Employment Rights Act 1996, can the reason for the dismissal be other than that given to the employee by the employer’s appointed decision-maker?’

Supreme Court found that the answer was-

‘yes, if a person in the hierarchy of responsibility above the employee determines that she (or he) should be dismissed for a reason but hides it behind an invented reason which the decision-maker adopts, the reason for the dismissal is the hidden reason rather than the invented reason.