Alison McDermott, a human resources and diversity consultant, was back at a tribunal last week fighting a second attempt by Sellafield waste facility and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to demand costs after she brought a whistleblowing case against both of them.

The consultant was sacked by Sellafield after she compiled a report at their request which revealed bullying at the plant and since then has faced a tribunal and an appeal tribunal before this fresh action bought by both nuclear bodies. She lost the first tribunal heard by judge Lancaster who originally ordered she should pay the £40,000 costs. But an appeal judge Auerbach overturned the costs order as ” unsafe”,

This week both bodies decided to spend more taxpayers’ money and appeal the judge’s order to ditch the costs. If Sellafield succeeds it will recover just six per cent of the huge lawyers fees both bodies had paid to pursue her for years.

The hearing opened with a blistering attack on her by Sellafield’s lawyer, Deshpal Panesar KC, Of Old Square Chambers who is paid £5.500 a day, effectively said that everything Alison McDermott said , including her whistleblowing detriments was a ” baseless lie”.

He told the tribunal she had made  “baseless claims of the most damaging sort, representing an existential threat to the careers of multiple public servants, based on multiple untruths”. Indeed so strong was his attack that a person who overhead part of the proceedings thought I had tuned into the Old Bailey and was hearing the denunciation of a convicted criminal.

Rachael Levene, representing the NDA, said Ms McDermott had “acted unreasonably”  by involving the nuclear body in the case at all. She claimed that the body, which works closely with Sellafield, was not involved and Ms McDermott should have known that because of all the evidence it produced. Given that the body had failed to extradite itself from the tribunal in the first place, this seemed to me rather a chilling attitude to take as it suggests that claimants should be blamed if they bring a case at all.

The NDA then raised that it had offered £160,000 to settle the case – even though it was arguing at the same time it should not have been involved in the first place – but this had been rejected by her. Ms McDermott has said that she did not settle the case over the money but over a point of principle to raise the issue in a tribunal. She also said that judge Lancaster had refused herself and her husband’s request to contest the NDA’s version of what happened at the meeting when the offer was made.

Alison McDermott countered arguments by Deshpal Panesar by pointing out that the appeal judge had ruled that the costs had been ” unjustly awarded ” and questioned his assertion that she was not a whistleblower by pointing out that the appeal judge decided she was and that judge Lancaster’s tribunal had erred in its judgement on two disclosures.

She also pointed out that she had pressed repeatedly for mediation to solve the dispute but this had been rejected and also that both sides had decided to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on expensive lawyers when they had big human resources and legal departments, over 100 at Sellafield, which could have handled the case.

Moral obligation to scared staff at Sellafield- Alison McDermott

She told the judge :”I was brought in to do a job and I did my job. I felt a deep moral obligation to the people I was speaking to who were telling me how scared and stressed they were by the culture at Sellafield.”

She said she was told by Lesley Bowen, a senior HR Manager, at Sellafield that she was let go for financial reasons.  Ms McDermott asked if there were any other reasons and Lesley Bowen confirmed  in writing that it was purely down to financial constraints. But after Ms McDermott found out they had spent £17 million awarding HR contracts they changed their tune and said they had lied to her and that they were really letting her go due to performance concerns. Which is odd as they had just rehired her, according to Ms Bowen, due to her excellent past performance working across Sellafield and the NDA.

At an earlier tribunal she had felt she had been treated by Mr Panesar equally badly during cross examination

She told me:” I found he transgressed professional boundaries and went further and took no account that I was vulnerable to such criticism.
“Over many days he accused me of being “motivated by spite,” “self-serving,” “self-absorbed, “wholly intent on chasing a windfall”, “seeking to ruin the reputations of HR staff at Sellafield” and even “acting out of revenge” .

She also disputed any idea by submitting a Freedom of Information request to obtain information that had been withheld by Sellafield and the NDA amounted to ” unreasonable behaviour.” These included information that both Sellafield and the NDA has spent £670,000 between them on lawyers and the NDA has just spent another £45,00 on prelimary legal work to recover £20,000 from her.

She pointed out that she and a witness on her behalf, another whistleblower at Sellafield, Karl Connor, had experienced ” unremitting stress” from the management at Sellafield.

She concluded: “The Tribunal is implored to recognise the substantial challenges the Claimant has faced in bringing this whistleblowing claim which has now been ongoing for 5.5 years.  The Claimant asks the Tribunal to affirm whistleblowers’ vital role and prevent further harm or costs to the Claimant. The significance of not penalising whistleblowers is particularly acute in the context of Sellafield Ltd, a nuclear facility where the potential consequences of unchecked wrongdoing could be catastrophic.”

Judge Stuart Robertson reserved judgement which will announced later.