Al Jazeera antisemitism doc whistleblower loses employment tribunal case against Labour
Employment judge dismisses case brought by ex-Labour investigations officer Halima Khan who claimed she had been unfairly dismissed and racially discriminated against
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
A former Labour investigations officer, who featured in an Al Jazeera documentary claiming antisemitism was used as a “tool” to stifle criticism of Israel, has had her claim for unfair dismissal against the party dismissed by a tribunal.
Halima Khan, who worked for nearly three years in Labour’s Governance and Legal Unit (GLU), took the party to a tribunal over a case that centred on the leaking to the media of confirmation that the suspension of television presenter Sir Trevor Phillips from the party over Islamophobia claims had been lifted.
While Khan was cleared of suspicion of leaking the confidential news herself to media outlets including the Guardian, Labour List, and to the Labour Muslim Network, she had been dismissed from her job in March 2022 after Labour bosses found that she had accessed data on the high-profile case other than for her work, and had misled managers about how she found out about the decision to lift the Sky News presenters ban.
At the tribunal in London she represented herself as she attempted to prove she had been unfairly dismissed by Labour in March 2022 and had also been the victim of racial discrimination.
But in a reserved judgment, Judge Goodman dismissed both claims, highlighting how Labour’s investigating team had concluded Khan’s evidence to them had been “knowingly deceptive”.
“The claimant’s evidence to the tribunal shows that they were not mistaken,” concluded Judge Goodman.
In 2022 Khan had been given a publicity as a “whistleblower” in the Al Jazeera series The Labour Files , where she claimed there a “hierarchy of racism” in the party dictated to her by management and that allegations of antisemitism were “used as a tool” for factional advantage against the left, and to silence critics of Israel.
The pro-Palestine campaigner is also understood to have withdrawn further claims of dismissal for making public interest disclosures and discrimination because of religion and belief, on the advice of the lawyers who had previously represented her.
Explaining her decision to drop the religious discrimination claim, Khan confirmed she had done so because “she is not a practising Muslim.”
The judge also noted:”We do not however consider the claimant has proved prejudice by managers getting her name (Halima/Hamila) and other ethnic minority names wrong on occasions.
“Such mistakes are not uncommon. They were not consistent. No one made deliberate errors. Most people make mistakes about names from time to time (including the claimant, who during the course of the hearing sent an e-mail to the wrong clerk – both have Muslim names).”
The hearing was told that while waiting for the result of an appeal against Labour Khan posted a message of support to the commander Ibrahim al-Nabulsi of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade after he was killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Khan said he was a “hero for the whole of Palestine who became the main target for Israel for his strength and determination in resisting the occupation” on her public Twitter account on 26 May 2022, which still described her as chair of the Labour Party’s BAME staff network, and part of the Labour Party Governance and Legal Unit staff.
“The martyrdom of Ibrahim Nablusi pained her because she knew what he meant to the people and many died to protect him,” the tribunal was told.
Labour lawyers noted that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was a designated terrorist organisation by the US and the EU, and sanctioned by the UK.
Khan said she had overlooked the need to change her Twitter account, and in any case had she not been dismissed, she would not have been in Palestine (where she was when she sent it).
The tribunal looked at the three occasions Khan was found to have accessed Labour’s confidential database to check up on the status of the investigation into Sir Trevor over the Islamophobia claims.
Khan, it was revealed, had initially been assigned the case herself, but her Labour bosses became concerned about the lack of progress being made in regards to moving the investigation forwards.
The tribunal was told how Labour’s lawyers were concerned also that in relation to the Philips case “there was no case log of actions taken by the claimant and no record of any investigation. ”
At the time Khan told her line-managers that she was experiencing problems with work and told her line-managers at work needed support “because of everything that is going on in Palestine/Israel, and the rise of Islamophobia”.
It had been decided on 18 May 2021 to lift the administrative suspension of Sir Trevor Phillips, and to ask another investigating officer in GLU, to continue the investigation.
Khan was not told the Phillips case had been assigned to someone else as she had not attended relevant meetings that month.
But it emerged that Khan had attended a meeting of Labour’s Diversion and Inclusion Board on 20th May 2021, where she raised concerns about whether staff advocating for Palestine risked their employment doing so.
Khan was eventually signed off from work on health grounds on 4 June.
She said she had struggled to keep going at work for some time, but finding out that the Phillips case had been reallocated without telling her “was something of a last straw.”
Khan said that on a date “towards the end of May or beginning of June”, the claimant attended a demonstration about Palestine, where she heard that Trevor Phillips’ suspension had been lifted.
Her subsequent actions led to her suspension by the party.
The tribunal confirmed: “We looked first of all at the respondent’s (Labour) decision to suspend the claimant while they investigated her access to the Trevor Phillips files.
“The letter which now featured in the press had been sent on 18th May. That must have been a leak, most likely by GLU staff or someone else accessing the files. They knew there had been an approach from Labour Muslim Network about it on the 18 June, even if there was no press until 6 July.
“They knew from the IT log that the people who had accessed the files were the claimant xxx and xxx.
“When the claimant complained on 6 July that she had found out from the Guardian that the file had been reallocated, they knew this could not be right, because she had looked at the files on 1st and 15th June.
“The claimant may have been innocent of discussing the case outside work, as she was protesting …. but they had reasonable cause to suspect her involvement.
“Any reasonable employer would have done this, any reasonable employer would have proceeded to investigate, and we also considered it entirely reasonable to suspend her access to Labour Party records while they did this, in case there were more leaks of confidential information..”
Khan returned from sick leave on 5 July, exactly the same day the Labour press office had questions from Labour List, a news blog, asking “was the suspension of Trevor Phillips lifted without due process?”.
A journalist from Labour List also asked: “Was the investigations officer working on it, also the only Muslim member of staff in GLU, excluded from the decision?”On the same day there was an inquiry from the Guardian legal affairs correspondent, saying he had been “told that Trevor Phillips has had his suspension from Labour for alleged Islamophobia lifted.
Furthermore, I was told that this happened without the case going before the NEC”.
The Guardian then published under the headline “Labour lifts Trevor Phillips’ suspension for alleged Islamophobia.
On 6 July 2021 Khan emailed her bosses at Labour to say she was “deeply disappointed and concerned that I have found the below information through the media, regarding a case I had been working on. Adding to the injury, having reviewed the disputes sent box, this was done prior to me going on sick leave
“Nevertheless, his readmission to the party comes amid suggestions that the party is facing significant discontent among Muslim voters. Last week Labour held Batley and Spen with a razor-thin majority after the divisive candidate and pro-Palestine campaigner George Galloway won more than 8,000 votes”.
Two weeks after being suspended, on 30 July 2021 Khan submitted a 32 page grievance letter complaining of race discrimination, covering events back to 2019.
But during a disciplinary investigation Khan admitted she had accessed Trevor Phillips’s files on the 1st and 15th June, saying: “It’s my case, there is no reason why I couldn’t access them”.
She added “the reason this was taken off me is because I’m a Muslim and this is a high profile Islamophobia case”.
Asked if she had supplied Labour Muslim Network with comment on the Phillips case in June 2021 Khan said: “I think that question in itself is absolutely offensive. I am the only Muslim member of staff in my team. Why is it assumed that I have associated with LMN.
“The ridiculousness of this is that white colleagues have done it and they wouldn’t be asked the same question right now.”
But a report to Labour’s HR department on the Khan case concluded “although the claimant had not been told that the case had been reassigned, there was an issue in relation to her ‘accessing the TP case files for purposes not pertaining to her role, which could be a breach of trust and a breach of data protection.
“It was also an issue that the claimant was ‘potentially dishonest in how she found out about the lifting of Trevor Phillips’s suspension, first suggesting it was the Guardian article, then that she had heard it at a protest.
“Accessing the TP files on 15 June, followed shortly afterwards by the LMN approach to the Labour Party, suggested she was the source of leak.
“Not identifying two unnamed others could be a ‘smokescreen’, and could suggest the claimant ‘had something to do with the leak of information’.”
Khan was dismissed by letter by Labour on 4 March 2022.
This month’s employment tribunal concluded the “investigation stage took far too long, and delayed disciplinary processes can lead managers to think that because it has lasted a long time it must be serious, leaving aside the strain on the suspended employee and the waste of an organisation’s resources.”
It was also concluded there were “borderline” reasons for Khan accessing the Phillips case files on one, or possibly two occasions, at a time when Labour suffered from “chaotic and haphazard maintenance of complaints case work at the time, the lack of any GDPR training for GLU staff, and the claimant’s evidence, not challenged, that GLU staff often looked at each other’s case files for precedents and guidance.”
But in relation to an email sent by Khan on July 6 the tribunal took a dim view, suggesting Khan had sought to deceive on how she actually came to find out the Phillips suspension had been lifted.
Labour’s investigation into Khan had concluded that the deceptive email was “sufficient gross misconduct of itself to justify dismissal. ”
“We accept this explanation,” concluded Judge Goodman. “Race did not play a part in dismissal.”
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