A former civil servant who unsuccessfully claimed he was constructively dismissed by the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald has failed in his appeal of that ruling.

Graeme Jones claimed that he was unfairly dismissed by the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald following 36 examples of whistleblowing.

In two rulings over the summer, the tribunal found that Mr Jones had proved two protected disclosures had been made, but all others failed or were withdrawn.

He alleged unfair constructive dismissal, whistleblowing, unlawful deduction from pay and sex discrimination. At the start of the hearing, he was alleging 36 whistleblowing allegations dating back to 2009.

In its report, the Employment and Equality Tribunal said: ‘The burden of proof was on Mr Jones to establish his allegations of protected disclosures and at the start of the Hearing, he abandoned quite a number of these allegations which were struck out.’

It said that it was only after he resigned from Office that Mr Jones began to look back at his time there, running from May 2009 to September 2020, to consider whether he had made protected disclosures in that period.

The panel said: ‘This is not a criticism of Mr Jones. He is entitled to do that. He was entitled to review what reports he had made and, if considered appropriate, then to advance them as protected disclosures.’

It also noted that the length of time the committee was looking at made matters difficult as conversations and documents long forgotten become highly relevant and either lead to memories fading or thousands of documents being examined.

Mr Jones was also representing himself, making his task to prove his case against the resources of the Attorney General’s Chambers more difficult, however, the panel considered this and said the AG’s representative Ms Heeley ‘has been more than fair in all her dealings with Mr Jones’.

disclosures

After this initial hearing, the panel considered that Mr Jones succeeded in proving he had made two protected disclosures.

One stemmed from an independent report into tech issues within Tynwald and a health and safety breach over a live transformer being exposed which posed a real threat of injury or death. All the others were rejected.

This was followed by a second hearing in which Mr Jones sought to prove that his protected disclosures had led to his leaving the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald by way of constructive dismissal.

The tribunal not only rejected his arguments but said it considered him someone who was ‘prone to exaggeration and dramatisation’.

It said: ‘Although throughout, Mr Jones portrayed himself as a victim with any number of ways of blaming third parties, in reality, issues during his employment and in this tribunal were self-inflicted.’

While rejecting evidence from others who said Mr Jones was a ‘barrack-room lawyer’ and an ‘organisational terrorist’, the tribunal said it did accept he had ‘presented a steady diet of problems for management throughout his employment’.

In the most recent hearing, Mr Jones appealed both rulings by the tribunal and claimed he had been misdirected as to what steps he had to take to do this.

Mr Jones said: ‘The chair directed me that I could progress EITHER a review requested by the tribunal OR an appeal via the high court.

‘It is my understanding, limited to online research due to the ever-present and allowed equality of arms issue, that a review request is a prerequisite of an appeal via the high court and therefore I was misdirected.’

However, the tribunal rejected this and said he had not been misdirected. Any party involved in a tribunal can appeal to the High Court without going through the review process.

Mr Jones also made several allegations against the Attorney General’s Chambers and its staff, while not detailing this further, the tribunal said: ‘None were material to either decision reached by the tribunal.’

Added to this, he made allegations that a panel member, David Keates, had ‘showed bias and that this arose from a purported conflict-of-interest’. However, chairman Douglas Stewart ‘concluded that the allegations were without merit and that the criticisms were unwarranted and unfair’.

Mr Stewart concluded by the review by saying Mr Jones had been unsuccessful in his appeal, but that ‘it is now open to Mr Jones to make an appeal to the high court if he so chooses’.