Former Sellafield consultant claims the nuclear complex tampered with evidence

Whistleblower Alison McDermott claims former employer Sellafield tampered with metadata in letters used in evidence during an employment tribunal.

Tommy Greene, Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly, 22 Apr 24

A former consultant at Sellafield has claimed that metadata in letters used against her in a tribunal hearing by the nuclear facility has been interfered with.

A tribunal has heard that three letters produced by managers at the vast nuclear complex and submitted as evidence in the employment dispute were “fabricated” and “tampered with”.

Alison McDermott lost a whistleblowing claim against the Cumbrian nuclear facility and is now fighting a demand to pay £40,000 costs.

The former Sellafield consultant said the metadata for one of the three letters was “wiped” by legal representatives for Sellafield.

She formally withdrew the allegations in her first employment tribunal claim against the nuclear complex.

The 2021 tribunal judgment determined that the letters were not “fabrications”.

“These letters are not fabrications, as had previously been asserted by the Claimant,” it found.

However, the ex-contractor raised her claims about the letters’ production and of alleged tampering during last week’s tribunal when defending herself from allegations she had acted “unreasonably” in the legal action with Sellafield and a regulatory body.

Sellafield maintains that McDermott’s allegations are “untrue”.

McDermott, a human resources (HR) consultant, signed a two-day-a-week contract with Sellafield worth £1,500 per day and was tasked in 2018 with looking at an employee’s sexual harassment allegations.

But within days of submitting a report that found the HR team was viewed as “broken and dysfunctional” by some staff, her contract was ended.

She has contested cost awards as a litigant-in-person during a one-day hearing in Leeds.

Summarising her arguments, tribunal judge Stuart Robertson said McDermott had suggested that the three letters used against her by Sellafield during the employment case over the termination of her contract were “fabricated and not genuine”.

Deshpal Panesar KC, who represented Sellafield at the tribunal, accused McDermott of “making baseless claims of the most damaging sort – representing an existential threat to the careers of multiple public servants”.

Panesar said McDermott had accused Sellafield and its regulatory body, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), of “illicit conduct, fabrication of evidence and false representations” when making her case.

McDermott sought to challenge cost awards made against her, amounting to £40,000, in a previous tribunal decision.

The employment tribunal claim she brought against Sellafield in 2021 was unsuccessful. But an appeal judge found aspects of her case “troubling” and she was subsequently recognised as a whistleblower under UK employment law.

Robertson, a new tribunal judge, is now considering whether McDermott’s claims and conduct have been “unreasonable”.

McDermott claims she suffered a number of detriments when her contract was terminated. She has since spoken out publicly against Sellafield, branding its workplace culture as “toxic”.

Sellafield and the NDA have contested the claims robustly, initially arguing McDermott’s work was ended for “financial reasons” and later as a result of her “poor” performance.

Suspicious of the letters

The three letters have been a central point of contention in McDermott’s court battle.

The Information Commissioner’s Office ruled in early 2021 that Sellafield had acted unlawfully, having broken data laws and committed security breaches for, among other things, failing to supply McDermott with the letters after she had made a data subject access request.

Sellafield subsequently used the critical letters against McDermott in the employment tribunal case she brought over the termination of her contract.

McDermott told Thursday’s tribunal that the letters had caused her “significant detriment”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366581793/Former-Sellafield-consultant-claims-the-nuclear-complex-tampered-with-evidence