Lambert v The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victimisation Discrimination)

Victimisation may be motivated by both a protected act and another motive. However, a claim fails where the Employment Tribunal finds as fact that the sole reason for the alleged detriment was an innocent reason unrelated to the protected act.

An Employment Tribunal need not expressly set out every aspect of the law of mixed motives where its Reasons, read fairly as a whole, clearly make that factual finding. Reasons are adequate where they identify the decisive reason and enable the parties to understand why the claim succeeded or failed.

The Claimant, a Home Office presenting officer, brought claims of race and sex discrimination and victimisation. The protected acts were emails asserting that refusal of her request to work at Angel Square for childcare reasons would amount to race and sex discrimination.

The Employment Tribunal dismissed all claims in a judgment dated 27 April 2015. It held that disciplinary proceedings, which resulted in a final written warning, were brought because the Claimant was perceived to be wilfully unmanageable and were not victimisation.

On a limited appeal, the central questions were whether the Tribunal had wrongly treated the employer's motivation as binary, despite the possibility of mixed motives, and whether its Reasons were adequate.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Tribunal did not misdirect itself and gave sufficient Reasons for rejecting the victimisation complaint concerning the disciplinary proceedings.

2. Mixed motives may operate in a victimisation case. The protected act need not be the only motivation for detrimental treatment. The Tribunal's reference to a protected act or another reason did not, fairly read in context, impose an unlawful binary test. [2000] AC 501

3. The Tribunal had made an unequivocal factual finding that the Claimant's perceived wilful unmanageability was the sole reason for commencing and pursuing disciplinary action. Since that reason was unrelated to the protected acts, the victimisation claim could not succeed. [2012] ICR 372; [2003] ICR 337; [2011] ICR 352

4. The Tribunal was not required to address separately every reference in the investigation report to threatened Employment Tribunal proceedings. Its Reasons answered the decisive “reason why” question: the disciplinary process was caused only by the Claimant's perceived unmanageability. That explanation enabled the parties to understand why the claim failed and was Meek-compliant. [1987] IRLR 250

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: Appeal dismissed: [2016] UKEAT 0074_16_2809.
• Employment Tribunal (London Central): All claims for race and sex discrimination and victimisation were dismissed by a judgment with Reasons dated 27 April 2015.
• Employment Appeal Tribunal preliminary process: The appeal was initially rejected on the paper sift under Rule 3(7), but was permitted to proceed on a limited ground following an appellant-only oral hearing under Rule 3(10).