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Get in touch 0117 325 0526
Facts:
After being rejected for two jobs at the Isle of Wight Council, Ms Sullivan complained about the interview process to the Council, the Care Quality Commission and to her MP. She claimed she was verbally assaulted and that a charitable trust linked to one of the interviewers was taking revenue despite being registered as dormant.
The Council looked into her complaints but dismissed them. It did not give her the usual right of appeal, saying this only applied to employees.
Ms Sullivan brought a Tribunal claim for detriment resulting from a protected disclosure.
The Tribunal and EAT dismissed her claim. She appealed to the Court of Appeal, arguing that excluding job applicants from whistleblowing protection breached her human rights – specifically the rights to freedom of expression and protection from discrimination under Articles 10 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Ms Sullivan argued that her status was equivalent to other protected categories and ought to be treated in the same way as NHS job applicants.
Court of Appeal decision
The Court of Appeal rejected Ms Sullivan’s arguments.
The Court said that external job applicants were not in an equivalent position to workers as the ‘position of someone seeking work is materially different from someone in work’.
Further, NHS job applicants were specifically protected in 2015 by Parliament to address specific concerns about patient safety and workplace culture. If Parliament had wanted to broaden those protections to all applicants, it would have done so at the time.
Implications:
For now, job applicants do not have the right to bring whistleblowing claims (other than certain NHS roles). But keep an eye on this – organisations like the whistleblowing charity ‘Protect’ are busy advocating for this right. Also, the Government has recently acknowledged a ‘long overdue requirement to look at whistleblowing law’, so we may well see this issue revisited at a later date.
5.0/5