Today sees the latest stage in the Dr Rosalind Ranson tribunal, with the panel set to look at issues around disclosure of documents.

Dr Ranson was unfairly dismissed by the government after she made protected disclosures (whistleblowing) when she was employed as the island’s top doctor.

The three-day hearing was confirmed to be going ahead only on Friday afternoon, after Deemster Andrew Corlett threw out an appeal from the Department of Health and Social Care.

There were two appeals made by the DHSC, which are not against the May 9 ruling that Dr Ranson was unfairly dismissed, but rather focus on the remit and scope of the tribunal panel and a not yet published ruling from August 1.

Friday’s hearing focused on the second appeal, with Jeremy Callin, recently appointed to represent the DHSC, arguing that the tribunal had ‘no jurisdiction’ to hold a special hearing into disclosure issues.

In the August 1 document, the tribunal referred to preventing miscarriages of justice in future tribunal hearings.

Mr Callin said: ‘With respect to the employment tribunal, they are not there to prevent miscarriages of justice.’

Turning to the comment from the tribunal that this week’s hearing was a ‘fact-finding mission’, Mr Callin again said ‘that’s not their function’.

Deemster Corlett accepted that the use of the word ‘mission’ was ‘perhaps a little unwise’, but said that a tribunal is there to find facts.

Mr Callin said that while that is true, by looking at how things went wrong instead of what went wrong was not within its powers.

He further noted that even though the DHSC had consented to, and partially complied with, the August 1 ruling by the tribunal, this was wrong of them and their advice, since taking over the Attorney General’s Chambers in representing the DHSC, was this should never have been agreed to.

The advocate ultimately summarised the appeal as a ‘simple overreach of the tribunal’.

Ultimately, the Deemster dismissed this appeal.

Deemster Corlett said he could get involved in a case only if the tribunal had made an error in law. And in his opinion, it hadn’t.

He added: ‘It is clear to me that the issue of disclosure is tied to the issue of remedies and costs.’

Responding to the ruling, which ensured that this week’s hearing could go ahead, Peter Russell, representing Dr Ranson, said that the appeal was ‘entirely without merit’ and had ‘simply confounded the distress and anxiety she had had to put up with’.

The first appeal, of which little was said on Friday, related to a judgement from the tribunal panel that asked for Anna Heeley, of the Attorney General’s Chambers, to give evidence to the tribunal.

In short, the case for the appeal is that the tribunal is trying to get Miss Heeley to break client privilege.

During Mr Callin’s submissions to the court, Deemster Corlett appeared to make his position quite clear on this important part of law, noting that lawyers just be ordered to break privilege without the consent of their client.

He added that such a position is ‘an absolute rule’.

With the latest round of hearings beginning today Tuesday), it is expected that the case will finally be brought to a conclusion in late January 2023, when a quantum hearing will finalise the amount of damages that are awarded to Dr Ranson.