In Beatt v Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, the Court of Appeal has dismissed an argument that an employer can ‘escape’ a finding of automatically unfair dismissal if it genuinely believed a disclosure was not protected. Linklaters, who acted for Dr Beatt, highlight that the case raised an interesting point of whistleblowing law, i.e.  the Trust’s argument that where an employee is dismissed and the employer genuinely, but wrongly, believes they are not legally protected as a whistleblower, the dismissal should not be automatically unfair under S.103A of the Employment Rights Act 1996. In effect, this would mean the test should be the same as a dismissal for misconduct where a dismissal may be fair where an employer shows that it genuinely, but wrongly, believed misconduct had occurred. The Court of Appeal dismissed this argument as “plainly wrong”. It “would be unacceptable in policy terms” as it “would enormously reduce the scope of protection” provided by the whistleblowing legislation.

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