Jackson v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police: EAT dismisses whistleblowing appeal

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has dismissed an appeal by a former senior Greater Manchester Police officer who claimed he had made 19 protected disclosures to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, upholding an employment tribunal's finding that none of them qualified for whistleblowing protection.

In Jackson v The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [2026] EAT 112, Mr Justice Mansfield, sitting with Dr Gillian Smith MBE and Miss Natalie Swift, rejected all nine grounds of appeal brought by Peter Jackson, a former Detective Chief Inspector who alleged he had suffered detriment and was constructively dismissed after submitting three lengthy reports to the IPCC in 2013 and 2014 alleging a culture of "cronyism" within the force, including allegations that failures by colleagues had allowed a child to be sexually abused and contributed to murders committed by Dale Cregan.

The underlying tribunal hearing ran to 102 days and produced a judgement of 381 pages, with Employment Judge Holmes and colleagues finding that Jackson's disclosures failed both the basic test for a qualifying disclosure under section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the heightened "substantially true" test that applies to disclosures made to a prescribed person such as the IPCC under section 43F.

A central issue on appeal concerned the tribunal's approach to identifying what information had actually been disclosed. Jackson's advisers had quoted only selected passages from his reports in the agreed list of issues, but the tribunal, prompted by the Chief Constable's argument that the claimant could not "fillet" his own disclosures, took into account surrounding material closely connected to those passages. The EAT found no procedural unfairness in this approach, noting Jackson had been cross-examined on the wider material throughout a hearing lasting many months, and rejected the argument that a claimant has a unilateral right to select which fragments of a document are subject to the statutory tests.

The EAT also upheld the tribunal's application of the "substantially true" requirement under section 43F, rejecting Jackson's contention that the tribunal had effectively required belief in the truth of 95 per cent of the disclosed material. The tribunal had directed itself correctly to apply a qualitative rather than quantitative assessment, drawing on the EAT's earlier guidance in Korashi v Aberfawe Uro Morgannwg University Local Health Board that disclosures made outside the employment relationship attract a stricter standard than those made to an employer. The tribunal's conclusion that Jackson lacked reasonable belief in central allegations, including a claim that a "murderer" was left free to walk the streets of Manchester following a colleague's mishandling of a death investigation, was found to be a permissible factual evaluation rather than an error of law.

A late attempt to introduce a new ground concerning the proper scope of the section 43F enquiry, raised only in oral argument on the final day of a four-day hearing, was refused permission to amend. The EAT found the point had not been argued before the tribunal, was raised without adequate explanation for the delay, and in any event had only limited practical significance given the tribunal's other findings.

Having upheld the tribunal's conclusion that no protected disclosures were made, the EAT went on, in case it was wrong, to consider Jackson's challenge to the tribunal's separate finding that he had not been constructively dismissed. It found no error in the tribunal's conclusions that he had not resigned in response to any breach, had affirmed his contract, and that no relevant "last straw" had been established.