First Deemster Andrew Corlett has dismissed an appeal from the Department of Health and Social Care, rejecting a claim that complying with an employment tribunal’s order would require their lawyer to breach legal professional privilege (LPP).
The Employment and Equality Tribunal, chaired by Douglas Stewart, requested that Anna Heeley be required to give some limited evidence into the unfair dismissal of Dr Rosalind Ranson.
Ms Heeley is a solicitor on the staff of the AG’s Chambers and represented the Department until recently in the EET claim brought by Dr Ranson against the DHSC.
The tribunal was interested in what Miss Heeley did to ensure proper disclosure and highlighting and explaining where and how matters had gone wrong.
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The DHSC had sought the quashing of paragraph 33 of the August 1, 2022 order, primarily, the notice of appeal challenged that paragraph because it is said that the EET had thereby erred in law by requiring a legal adviser to breach legal professional privilege (LPP), something Ms Heeley could not do with the DHSC’s consent.
In his ruling, Deemster Corlett said: ‘It was common ground at the hearing of the appeal that it is not permissible for the EET to make an order which has the effect of breaching LPP (there being no relevant exceptions in this case eg fraud, to the applicability of LPP). Indeed the EET itself made it clear, having received a query on August 8 from Dr Ranson’s solicitors, that it had no intention of making an order which had this effect.’
He added: ‘LPP therefore was not an issue at the appeal hearing and had probably not been an issue since the EET’s clarification on August 9, 2022.’
However, the DHSC didn’t agree with this, arguing that the matters under questions were ones that the DHSC or Government Technology Services ‘could answer and in respect of which Ms Heeley is in no position to personally answer as a witness’.
Despite this argument, Deemster Corlett ruled that Ms Heeley could provide the necessary information without breaching her client’s LPP and that the tribunal, with Kathryn Magson being ‘seemingly reluctant to provide information voluntarily’, it had exhausted all other avenues available to it.
He added: ‘They knew that they should not bring about a breach of LPP and did not at any time intend to do so… As I have held, I consider that she was and is capable of providing factual, relevant evidence to the EET.’