Take no prisoners

Secretary of State for Justice v Mansfield

Although there are no longer any statutory rules governing dispute resolution, employers still have to run disciplinary hearings in line with the rules of natural justice. In Secretary of State for Justice v Mansfield, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) said that employers have a wide discretion when deciding whether to continue with internal disciplinary proceedings when the police are investigating the same allegations.

Basic facts

Mr Mansfield, a prison officer at HMP Pentonville, was accused in April 2006 of orchestrating violence among prisoners and planting drugs on them. He was suspended and at the beginning of May the matter was referred to the police. He was subsequently prosecuted, but found not guilty in April 2007.

The prison then picked up its investigation where it had left off a year earlier, although the report into the allegations was not completed until the end of October. The Governor then decided that disciplinary proceedings would go ahead. Mr Mansfield was told in February 2008 that the charge had been upheld and he was dismissed.

He claimed unfair dismissal. To defeat his claim, the prison service had to satisfy the test inBritish Home Stores v Burchell. In other words, that they believed that the employee was honestly guilty of the misconduct alleged; that the belief was held on reasonable grounds; and that they came to that belief after a reasonable investigation.

Tribunal decision

The tribunal decided in Mr Mansfield’s favour, saying that the lengthy delay in the proceedings leading up to his dismissal was unacceptable; and that the governor did not genuinely believe he was guilty of misconduct and therefore could not satisfy the requirements of the test inBurchell.

EAT decision

The EAT, however, overturned that decision saying that when considering whether a delay was unacceptable, tribunals must look both at the length of the delay and the reasons for it.

In this case, it said that the governor had a wide discretion under prison service rules about whether to pursue disciplinary action at the same time as a criminal investigation. These advised governors to be careful to ensure that disciplinary proceedings did not prejudice criminal proceedings.

Given the facts of this case, the EAT decided that “the employer’s decision, that the disciplinary hearing should be postponed while the police were still gathering evidence and while a Crown Court prosecution was under way, was entirely proper. There was no basis on which the ...Tribunal could hold that it rendered Mr Mansfield’s dismissal unfair, particularly when they were unable to point to any prejudice caused by it or even to say whether it strengthened or weakened the case against him”.

In terms of the misconduct test, the EAT said that the tribunal had slipped into the trap of substituting its view for that of the employer. As a result it had confused a lack of honest belief in Mr Mansfield’s alleged misconduct by the prison service with a lack of reasonable grounds for holding such a belief.

It was not for the tribunal to say who it believed. Instead of focussing on whether the employer had acted fairly and reasonably in the circumstances, it had substituted its view for that of the employer and decided that although the prison service had reasonable grounds for believing he was guilty of the allegation, it did not honestly hold that belief.