Employment Appeals Tribunal
My appeal to the Employment Appeals Tribunal was heard on Thursday 29th July. Although written judgments are usually provided within a relatively short time of the hearing, as I have found is usual with my case things did not happen in the normal way. In fact two months after the hearing my legal team had still not received the written judgement and my appeal application to the Court of Appeal had to be submitted without the benefit of us having seen the written judgement, even though the rules governing an appeal state that the time limit for appeals is supposed to be fourteen days following the receipt of the written judgement. I did write a letter of complaint to the Customer Services Officer at the Tribunal to complain, but despite the fact the Tribunal's own rules say that a full reply will be sent to all complaint letters within fifteen working days I have still not received a reply to my letter.
The full judgement can be read by clicking here. I am pleased that Mr Justice Mitting found that, "It was throughout clear that no criticism whatever could be made or was made of the Appellant's technical competence nor of his integrity". However, although the Employment Appeals Tribunal accepted that I had been subjected to an unfair disciplinary process and that I had consequently been unfairly dismissed and found that that the Employment Tribunal had not categorised the reason for my dismissal. Surprisingly Mr Justice Mitting did not feel that this was fatal to the Employment Tribunal's reasoning or to the safety of its decision to uphold my dismissal. Amazingly in my view Mr Justice Mitting formed the view that there was no other element of unfairness in the procedure apart from the lack of impartiality of the Chairman. From my layman's perspective I would have thought the impartiality of the person who chaired my disciplinary and made the decision to dismiss me would have been pretty fundamental but apparently not. The ETA judgement goes on to suggest that a fair hearing would have also produced my dismissal because I had accused Mr Hamilton of personal dishonesty and Mr Watts of preparing false notes of the meeting held on the 8th August and that consequently it was my actions that made it impossible for us to work together again. The ETA therefore came to the conclusion that notwithstanding the lack of the impartiality of the Chairman my conduct at the hearing resulted in the conclusion that I would have inevitably have been fairly dismissed.
In response to this judgement I have lodged an appeal application with the Court of Appeal and am currently talking to my legal team about how we can take this forward. As a comment on the suggestion that I was not entitled to accuse Mr Hamilton and Mr Watts of personal dishonesty I would make the following comments. While they denied the accusations in the Employment Tribunal, they have never had the courage to challenge the information on this website which publicly and clearly lays out the accusations I have made against them and provides the written evidence which I believe shows that my criticisms are wholly justified. If they truly felt that these accusations were untrue they have had ample time in which to initiate defamation proceedings against me and they have chosen not to do so. I think the fact that they have chosen not to, speaks volumes. In addition the NHS commissioned an internal report by David Sissling to look into the allegations that I have made. The publication date of the report was Tuesday 19th October 2004 and the report states,
"I consider Mr Perkin's allegations proven, in respect of the inappropriate alteration of cancelled operations data for the three weeks commencing 24 September 2001. I am also of the opinion that the Trust was wrong in offering a variety of excuses for the error occurring".
"In conclusion, I am of the opinion that, in respect of the inappropriate charging to Trust expenditure of the Savoy Hotel bill, by Mr Hamilton, the allegation is proven".
If the NHS itself feels that my allegations are proven, particularly with regard to Mr Hamilton, you will understand my disappointment that the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeals Tribunal feels that I should have been dismissed for daring to "blow the whistle" and accuse these individuals of lying. They did lie and I am glad to have stood up and told the truth even if it lost me my job. I am just sorry that the treatment I received from the "Establishment" will be such a discouragement to others to stand up and tell the truth about the NHS in the future. My book " Don't Blow The Whistle" will contain further information demonstrating that everything I have said in relation to these matters is true.