A former police ombudsman said the case was “appalling”
By Mandy McAuley & Guy Grandjean
BBC NI Spotlight
The former head of the PSNI’s professional standards department discriminated against his deputy, an employment tribunal has found.
It found that Ch Insp Ursula Merrick was discriminated on grounds of her sex and disability.
Supt Ian Campbell, now retired, subjected her to “unwarranted, highly damaging allegations”.
The PSNI said it would take time to fully consider the written judgement before commenting.
Claims of discrimination on the grounds of Ms Merrick’s part-time status and direct disability were dismissed.
Former Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’Loan said the case was both “appalling and very significant.”
Ursula Merrick lodged her complaint in September 2018.
The disability claim that was upheld concerned the PSNI’s failure to make reasonable adjustments for arthritic pain in allowing her to work additional hours from home.
Ms Merrick has since medically retired.
The PSNI was found jointly liable. The remedy for the discrimination will be decided at a future hearing.
The tribunal found Ursula Merrick, to be a “careful, credible, and consistent historian whose evidence was generally supported by contemporaneous notes and documents”.
It also found her to be an experienced and knowledgeable officer.
Ms Merrick, an author of the PSNI’s whistle blowing policy, found herself the subject of “scurrilous and unfounded” allegations after she alerted her boss to concerns around a fellow officer’s behaviour.
The tribunal was unable to discern from the evidence “any credible explanation” for her boss’s “tenacious pursuit and repeated dissemination of spurious, unwarranted and highly damaging allegations against the claimant”.
The tribunal found that Ch Insp Merrick’s treatment was related to her whistleblowing on alleged sexual harassment involving other officers.
The tribunal said that her protected disclosures were “an effective or material cause of her treatment”.
Gender stereotyping
Following her subsequent request to work additional hours from home, she alleged that Ian Campbell told her “no one would know if you were actually working or standing making the dinner”.
The tribunal concluded that the comment was “fatally infected with gender stereotyping”.
The tribunal also found that the then head of the Professional Standards Department made “unwarranted redactions of relevant material in order to suppress evidence contained in his journals which would either have helped the claimant’s case or harmed his case” and that this “tainted his evidence”.
As a result the tribunal accepted his evidence only where “it was not in dispute” or “separately corroborated by other evidence”.
Ms Merrick had sought to include a claim of religious discrimination, but subsequently withdrew it.
Former NI Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’loan said the tribunal result was “an appalling and very significant situation” and there are serious questions as to how it was allowed to happen.
She told the BBC: “The evidence shows that Ursula Merrick was a hardworking, effective and very able officer who suffered repeated discrimination and harassment.
“What has the PSNI done since 2018 to create structures which will provide effective protection for women at work against harassment and discrimination?
“There is clearly much work to be done to deal with misogyny and discrimination in the PSNI. It is very tragic that an excellent career ended in this way.”
The case follows an ongoing sex discrimination tribunal into the treatment of Emma Bond, former PSNI Ch Supt and first female commander of Derry City and Strabane policing district.
Wider concerns about the conduct of members of the Professional Standards Department were raised in a BBC Spotlight investigation about the covert methods used against fellow officers by some anti-corruption detectives.
