Howard Beckett v Sharon Graham and Unite the Union: privacy claim survives strike-out over ambiguous tribunal finding

A misuse of private information claim brought by Howard Beckett, the former Assistant General Secretary of Unite the Union, against Unite and its General Secretary Sharon Graham will proceed to trial after the High Court held that a key Employment Tribunal finding was insufficiently clear to found an issue estoppel.

In Beckett v Graham and Unite the Union [2026] EWHC 1794 (KB), handed down on 16 July 2026, Mr Justice Coppel dismissed the defendants' application to strike out under CPR 3.4(2)(b) and declined to enter summary judgement on the injunction sought.

The claim concerns 3 August 2022, when Mr Beckett received a letter suspending him from his employment and, hours later, an email from Sky News reporter Joe Pike seeking comment on the suspension. Mr Beckett alleges the letter or the fact of the suspension was leaked to Mr Pike by Ms Graham or Unite.

The same allegation formed one strand of Mr Beckett's constructive unfair dismissal claim, dismissed by the Employment Tribunal in September 2024 after an 11-day hearing at which Ms Graham did not give evidence. The defendants, represented by Adam Wolanski KC and Katya Pereira, instructed by Brett Wilson, argued the point had been decided against him.

Applying the principles recently restated by the Supreme Court in Skatteforvaltningen v MCML Ltd [2026] UKSC 19, Coppel J accepted two of the three necessary planks. The tribunal's ruling on responsibility for the leak was fundamental rather than merely evidentiary, notwithstanding the several other alleged breaches on which the claim had also failed, since it was capable on its own of grounding constructive dismissal. Ms Graham, though unable formally to be a respondent below, was a privy: she was de facto a defendant, her conduct was investigated, and applying the evaluative test in Tyne & Wear PTE v RMT it would not be just to permit relitigation of her responsibility.

The application nonetheless failed on clarity. Central to the reasoning was paragraph 139 of the tribunal's judgement, which found no evidence of misuse of private information, then found substantial grounds to believe Unite may have leaked communications, whether inadvertently or deliberately, before concluding there was no evidence this was done by or at the instigation of three named individuals and dismissing the contention of breach.

Coppel J identified eight difficulties with the paragraph. It never expressly mentioned the suspension letter despite the prominence of that allegation. There was apparent tension between finding no evidence of misuse and finding substantial grounds to believe leaking occurred, a tension resolved only if the opening sentence was read as confined to named individuals. The tribunal had separately found, at paragraph 55, that access to the letter was carefully controlled by Unite's Executive Head of Operations, yet it reached Mr Pike, and there was no suggestion the claimant sent it. Had the tribunal meant there was no leak from within Unite at all, some explanation of how the letter reached the reporter might have been expected.

The confusion did not reach the total obscurity found in Turner v London Transport Executive, but went well beyond fringe argument about what was decided.

The judgement noted that the Employment Appeal Tribunal has granted permission on all 11 grounds, with HHJ Tayler observing it was arguable the tribunal wrongly treated identification of the individual leaker as necessary. Even had the finding been sufficiently clear, Coppel J would have exercised his discretion against strike-out given the realistic prospects of that appeal, listed for hearing between April and September 2027. Striking out now, only for the employment proceedings to produce a different outcome, would cause significant unfairness.

Either party may renew the application once the position is clearer. The claim for an injunction, framed to restrain disclosure of any information relating to the claimant, has no prospect of succeeding in its present form, and Anthony Hudson KC, appearing with Hayley Webster for Mr Beckett, indicated it would be narrowed if maintained.