Pasha v The Home Office: EAT upholds dismissal of immigration officer for unauthorised CRS searches

An immigration enforcement officer dismissed after 30 years' service for conducting unauthorised searches on Home Office computer systems has failed in her appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. In Pasha v The Home Office [2026] EAT 42, His Honour Judge Barklem upheld the employment tribunal's finding that the dismissal was fair, rejecting all five grounds permitted to proceed to a full hearing.

Rukhsana Pasha had worked for the Home Office from 1991 until her summary dismissal in February 2022. An audit in late 2020 revealed that she had accessed the UK Visa Central Reference System (CRS) on multiple occasions between 2006 and 2017, looking up personal data relating to her own former in-laws, a Pakistani customs contact, and relatives of a junior colleague who had asked her to conduct searches on her behalf. The conduct post-dated a June 2013 circular placing all staff on notice that unauthorised access to Home Office systems constituted gross misconduct carrying a zero-tolerance policy.

The central procedural issue arose from steps taken by the decision manager, Mr Wilkinson, both before and after the disciplinary hearing. Before the hearing, he had contacted a manager named Smith directly — rather than returning the matter to the investigation manager — to establish whether the claimant had been authorised to conduct the 2015 and 2017 searches. Smith confirmed he had no recollection of authorising such checks and would not have done so given that the individuals were connected to a colleague. His responses were shared with the claimant and her union representative in advance of the hearing.

After the hearing, but before issuing his decision, Wilkinson made further enquiries of two other individuals — Edwards and Newbould — to satisfy himself that no authorisation had been overlooked. Neither was aware of any legitimate basis for the searches. Those responses were not disclosed to the claimant prior to the dismissal decision.

The tribunal found both steps to be procedural shortcomings. However, it concluded that the post-hearing enquiries were essentially a "nil return" — attempts to find exculpatory material that, far from prejudicing the claimant, could only have assisted her had they yielded a different answer. The EAT agreed. HHJ Barklem held that, absent those enquiries, the evidence was already squarely against the claimant, and the outcome would have been the same.

On the question of the ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, the EAT confirmed the well-established principle that a tribunal is not required to cite the Code expressly, provided the substance of its requirements is reflected in the analysis. The relevant provisions — that investigation and disciplinary functions should where practicable be separated, and that evidence should ordinarily be disclosed before a disciplinary meeting — are couched in qualified rather than mandatory terms. Their breach does not render a dismissal automatically unfair. The tribunal had, in substance, engaged with both requirements, and no error of law was made out.

The comparator argument under Ground 7 fared no better. Wilkinson had given evidence that a different employee found guilty of four unauthorised look-ups had received a 24-month final written warning rather than dismissal, compared with the claimant's 20 look-ups. No further questions were put to him in cross-examination about the circumstances of that case, and the claimant adduced no specific evidence about any comparator. The EAT held that, in such circumstances, the tribunal was not obliged to go beyond the evidence before it.

The allegation that Wilkinson had acted in bad faith was dismissed on the basis that it had not been pleaded and had not been put to him in evidence. The delay ground was rejected on the basis that the tribunal had considered each period of delay and its impact on the claimant's health, and had been entitled to conclude that the respondent's view of the seriousness of the conduct was unaffected.

Finally, the argument that the look-ups constituted a "legitimate business need" because the claimant was an immigration enforcement officer was rejected. The EAT accepted the respondent's submission that investigating individuals connected to oneself or to colleagues for private purposes falls outside the concept of legitimate business need, regardless of the officer's substantive role.

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