Another waste of public money on a race case that should never have been defended.

Parmar vs Leicester City Council is the latest race discrimination decision in which a public sector employer wastes taxpayers money on a case that should never have been necessary, should never have been disputed, and certainly never appealed, never mind by a KC. https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2024/85.html

Bindu Parmar was a social worker in Leicester City Council with 24 years employment in social work without any disciplinary or other sanction. She was Head of Service for Locality West, one of the Service Areas within the Adult Social Care and Safeguarding Division. After a complicated set of conflicts that she had no original involvement in, Bindu Parmar was temporarily moved from her role.

She was also subjected to a disciplinary investigation. The allegations against her?were vague. The employer found that there was no case to answer. Bindu Parmar, who is of Indian origin, brought a claim of race discrimination against her employer. She said that?conflicts were common where she worked but?investigations had only targeted her as an Asian employee. The Tribunal noted

29. On 26 March 2021, the claimant was invited to a reconvened investigation meeting with Ms Tote to be held on 22 April. At that meeting the claimant said:

I hope you can understand that I have been interviewed for 3 hours now and I still don't know what I have failed in. What code of conduct have I failed in? What professional standard have I failed in? Why can't somebody tell me what I have done wrong?

30. The Employment Tribunal held that there was "no substantive reply from Ms Tote to that question" despite the fact that she had by then reviewed all of the interviews.

31. A further meeting was arranged by Ms Tote for 7 May 2021 at which the claimant was to be told that there was no case to answer and the process was being brought to an end. The claimant did not attend the meeting. The outcome of the investigation was confirmed in writing the same day.

Two issues

There are two issues that stand out. Firstly, this is yet another case where vague allegations are used to target an employee of Black and Minority Ethic heritage. This feels very familiar from a number of recent cases I am aware of.

Secondly, an employer – and their lawyers- seemed to have had no adequate grasp of employment case law. As we noted in Too Hot To Handle (LINK) there are two stages in a discrimination claim.?

Firstly, an employment tribunal must consider if the Claimant raises?facts from which discrimination could reasonably be inferred.?

Second, if such facts have been raised by a Claimant, the burden shifts to the Respondent to disprove discrimination.

In this case, the employment tribunal found discrimination was a possible explanation for the facts raised by Bindu Parmar and so the burden of proof changed. The Respondent had failed to discharge the?burden of proof and the Claimant’s claim succeeded.

The Respondent appealed, the Council paying a fat fee to a Kings Counsel, and claimed that the employment tribunal had been wrong to find that burden of proof had shifted. It claimed the tribunal should have used the two-stage test for each allegation. It claimed the tribunal?should not have taken an overall view. It?also contended that the tribunal had erred by finding that the fact of a difference in treatment between Bindu Parmar and other staff was sufficient to shift the burden of proof.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal disagreed. It found that a blanket approach to the assessment of the shifting of the burden of proof was acceptable in this case. It held that the original tribunal had correctly decided that a difference in treatment of other colleagues in similar circumstances, where those colleagues were of a different race, was evidence that could support a claim of race discrimination. The tribunal had correctly looked at all the evidence.

So who wins?

Bindu Parmar wins – and well done – but she will have paid a high price due to her treatment and the impact of the process

Leicester City Council will have lost shed loads of money on a tribunal and an appeal using a Kings Counsel.

?Senior managers who went along with this nonsense will not be held accountable but are likely to be regarded by staff of BME heritage as having colluded in discrimination.

?Those who should be receiving social services will find the legal costs eat into the social work budget and that the conflicts which kicked this process off probably remain.

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The KC wins, of course, as does his bank balance. I’m not sure who else does. Given that the Council appealed it seems likely the response will be denial not blame not learning.

What a shambles.

But well done Bindu Parmar for gaining justice.

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Roger Kline is Research Fellow at Middlesex University Business School and joint author with Joy Warmington of Too Hot to Handle: why concerns about racism are not heard or acted on. https://27aa994b-a128-4a85-b7e6-634fb830ed15.usrfiles.com/ugd/27aa99_9a9468c5e4da43288da375a17092d685.pdf