Protected Disclosure in UK Law

Unfair dismissal and discrimination on specific prohibited grounds are, however, different causes of action. The statutory structure of the unfair dismissal legislation is so different from that of the discrimination legislation that an attempt at cross fertilisation or legal transplants runs a risk of complicating rather than clarifying the legal concepts.

Moreover whatever direct use may or may not be made of information given, or material disclosed, under the compulsory process of the court, it must not be overlooked that, quite apart from that, its provision or disclosure may set in train a process which may lead to incrimination or may lead to the discovery of real evidence of an incriminating character. In the present case, this cannot be discounted as unreal: it is not only a possible but probably the intended result.

Grammatically, the word “information” has to be read with the qualifying phrase, “which tends to show [etc]” (as, for example, in the present case, information which tends to show In order for a statement or disclosure to be a qualifying disclosure according to this language, it has to have a sufficient factual content and specificity such as is capable of tending to show one of the matters listed in subsection (1).

Where information is passed by the solicitor or client to the other as part of the continuum aimed at keeping both informed so that advice may be sought and given as required, privilege will attach. Moreover, legal advice is not confined to telling the client the law; it must include advice as to what should prudently and sensibly be done in the relevant legal context.

Mr Melia points out that the detriment for which he can be compensated under Part X—having regard to section 123—is loss sustained in consequence of the dismissal. That is loss which he suffered after the effective date of dismissal—9 November 2001. Detriment sustained before 9 November 2001 is not taken out of section 47B (and Part V) by the limitation in section 47B(2). It is not detriment which "amounts to dismissal" when the two sections are properly read together.

It is that, although the basis of the law's protection of confidence is that there is a public interest that confidences should be preserved and protected by the law, nevertheless that public interest may be outweighed by some other countervailing public interest which favours disclosure.

If a person in the hierarchy of responsibility above the employee (here Mr Widmer as Ms Jhuti's line manager) determines that, for reason A (here the making of protected disclosures), the employee should be dismissed but that reason A should be hidden behind an invented reason B which the decision-maker adopts (here inadequate performance), it is the court's duty to penetrate through the invention rather than to allow it also to infect its own determination.