{"id":7943,"date":"2014-06-18T12:05:26","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T12:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2014\/06\/18\/whistleblower-wins-landmark-case\/"},"modified":"2016-01-07T14:42:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T14:42:48","slug":"whistleblower-wins-landmark-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2014\/06\/18\/whistleblower-wins-landmark-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblower Wins Landmark Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3>&#8220;Tried to Protect the Public Purse&#8221;<\/h3>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"3\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"10\" align=\"middle\" src=\"http:\/\/theasiantoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/naz-shah-employment-tribunal-jpg.jpg\"\/><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>A mother-of-two has who \u201ctried to protect the public purse from suspected fraud\u201d has been praised after single-handedly winning a landmark employment ruling. <\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cNaz Shah, a 37-year-old Bradford mother-of-two, took a local government association to the hearing for detriment damages and unfair dismissal in a two-year David and Goliath-style battle after her own union refused to back her as it rated her chances of success as being too slim.\u201d <\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Her victory has been described by the tribunal panel as a \u201chistorical case for whistleblowers.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cIn 2009 Mrs Shah, who worked as a commissioning manager for NHS Bradford and Airedale, was seconded to become programme director of a national pilot scheme called Get Connected which was hosted by Local Government Yorkshire and Humber.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cThe scheme was to encourage more Muslim women into leadership in public, private and voluntary sectors region-wide.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cBut at a three-day tribunal in Leeds, it was heard how alarm bells started ringing for Mrs Shah on day one of the \u00a340,000 per year job that was contracted for 23 months.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cWithin two weeks Mrs Shah had become so concerned about the programme\u2019s funding arrangements and lack of paper-trails for claims, bids and invoices that she considered returning to her PCT job \u2013 but she stayed on.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cUltimately she resigned from the post and also went on to take redundancy from the NHS due to the toll of the case. The tribunal decided in favour of Mrs Shah\u2019s claim that she suffered detriment because of her whistleblowing actions.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cHowever, because she was on a secondment at the time and therefore not directly employed by Local Government Yorkshire and Humber, the unfair dismissal part of her claim could not be found in her favour.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>In conclusion, the tribunal panel stated: \u201cThe claimant\u2019s original motive and instincts were right: concern for the public purse and the frameworks in place to look after it.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cThe Tribunal considered this case, unlike many cases brought under the whistleblowing provisions, to be a paradigm for their need.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u201cMrs Shah, of Daisy Hill Lane, said: \u201cThis now protects other secondees and workers who will whistleblow in good faith. I\u2019m just glad I was honest.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>A spokesman for the Local Government Yorkshire and Humber said \u201cwith a remedy hearing still to take place to decide the level of compensation for Mrs Shah it would not be appropriate to comment.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Mrs Shah is now helping to run a family children\u2019s play venture in Lister Mills.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Tried to Protect the Public Purse&#8221; &#13; &#13; A mother-of-two has who \u201ctried to protect the public purse from suspected fraud\u201d has been praised after single-handedly winning a landmark employment ruling. &#13; \u00a0 &#13; \u201cNaz Shah, a 37-year-old Bradford mother-of-two, took a local government association to the hearing for detriment damages and unfair dismissal in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}