For All the Victims

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The running of the Human Resources and Legal divisions at Cambridge University has created many victims who could not fight back — young and early-career scholars, those without standing or status in the University, those without the financial resources or the mental stamina to challenge the University’s deceitful practices. 

This victory is dedicated to them.

The full decision in the Cambridge Whistleblowing Tribunal is available here. Thanks are due to Employment Judge Graham, Mrs A Buck and Ms S Williams for the careful and compassionate way in which they conducted the proceedings and reached their judgment.

We summarise the key findings below. We will have more to say later about what should happen next.

Systemic failures

The Tribunal found systemic failures in the University’s handling of the matter. It unanimously held that Professor Wyn Evans was subjected to detriments because he made protected disclosures about the bullying of female staff by Professor Richard McMahon. Eleven of the 14 alleged detriments were upheld against the University and/or individual respondents.

The Tribunal repeatedly found decision-making to be opaque: matters were presented to senior decision-makers as fait accompli by Human Resources (HR), meaningful inquiries were lacking, paper trails or note-taking were inadequate and there were instances of “ghost writing” by HR for the senior leadership team.

A retaliatory complaint allowed to continue

Prof McMahon’s retaliatory complaint against Prof Evans was allowed to become a prolonged and fundamentally one-sided process. The Tribunal found it extraordinary that the University accepted and continued investigating allegations that were insufficiently particularised and unsupported by any evidence. Prof Evans was not even told the case against him for a substantial period.

The Tribunal described the process as contrary to natural justice, noting that Prof McMahon repeatedly failed to provide the evidence or particulars requested.

The failure to stop the grievance became very serious once the HR Director Ms Andrea Hudson recognised it as a “counter-complaint”. The Tribunal found that Ms Louise Akroyd and Prof Nigel Peake were on notice that the complaint was retaliatory, yet the investigation still continued. It said it was “impossible to understand” why the process was allowed to continue for so long without supporting evidence.

HR: lack of ownership and oversight

The Tribunal was particularly critical of HR’s handling of the delays. It found that the investigation was allowed to “drift excessively”, with very little effective oversight and a “clear lack of ownership or interest from HR”.

It also noted that correspondence purportedly from senior figures — including the Academic Secretary, Registrary and Vice-Chancellor — was routinely drafted by HR and sometimes with input from Legal Services. This helped create the appearance of senior-level ownership without clear evidence of genuine independent consideration.

Professor Nigel Peake and the lack of candour

Professor Nigel Peake was criticised both for the initial handling of Prof McMahon’s grievance and for failing to insist on evidence.

Although Prof Peake decided that the retaliatory complaint should be investigated, the Tribunal found that the investigation should not have continued once it became apparent that Prof McMahon was providing no evidence. Prof Peake had expressly warned Prof McMahon against retaliation, yet once the complaint against Prof Evans was underway, he did not bring it to an end. It continued for nearly two years.

The Tribunal also found aspects of Prof Peake’s evidence “not entirely candid”.

Professor Eilis Ferran and protecting the University

Professor Eilis Ferran ultimately rejected Prof McMahon’s grievance as unsubstantiated. Prof Ferran accepted that Prof McMahon had failed to substantiate his allegations, yet concluded — surprisingly — that they were neither malicious, vexatious nor retaliatory. The Tribunal found her assertion that Prof McMahon could not have known about Prof Evans’s whistleblowing “did not seem credible”, particularly given what Prof Evans had expressly told him.

More strikingly, when repeatedly asked what evidence supported the assertion that Prof Evans had made false or unsubstantiated allegations, Prof Ferran could not answer. The Tribunal inferred that she did not want to say anything that might harm the University.

Professor Kamal Munir and procedural barriers

Prof Kamal Munir’s involvement illustrates the procedural barriers Prof Evans faced when attempting to understand the University’s handling of the matter.

Prof Munir received Prof Evans’s grievance against the HR Director Ms Hudson with regard to the progressing of Prof McMahon’s retaliatory allegations, but the University initially resisted dealing with it. It then took almost six months simply to appoint an investigator.

The University then refused to address Prof Evans’s later grievance against Prof Peake and Ms Akroyd. It found that his whistleblowing had been a material influence on the decision not to process that grievance.

Professor Tim Harper and the 624-day delay

Professor Tim Harper’s investigation into the conduct of HR was itself found to be seriously deficient. The grievance took 624 days to conclude — what the Tribunal described as a “staggering” delay. Although it accepted that Prof Harper was busy, it found that his task was relatively discrete and should not have taken anything approaching that length of time.

More seriously, the Tribunal found that Prof Harper failed to investigate key allegations. In particular, alleged serious breaches of HR confidentiality by Prof McMahon were rejected on the basis that there was “no evidence”, even though Prof Harper ultimately accepted that he had not actually investigated those breaches.

The Tribunal described his evidence on this point as “not satisfactory” and “less than candid”. It also found his treatment of other complaints to be a “non-response” and “deflective”, giving the clear impression that he wanted to “shut this down” rather than properly engage with Prof Evans’s concerns.

The Tribunal did not find Prof Harper himself incompetent. Instead, it placed much of the responsibility on the University’s HR division.

Professor Deborah Prentice and the lack of independent scrutiny

The Tribunal also found the most senior decision-making wanting. The Registrary and Vice-Chancellor did not provide the independent scrutiny one would expect. Prof Evans repeatedly raised concerns about the investigation and related matters with the Registrary and Vice-Chancellor, but responses were delayed, limited or non-substantive.

The Tribunal was particularly critical of the handling of Prof Evans’s final complaint to Professor Deborah Prentice. Her rejection letter had been drafted by somebody else. The Tribunal considered it “incredibly unlikely” that she could have conducted the claimed full review of the substantial papers within the time available, and found that the complaint had instead been “summarily rejected, without serious consideration”.

It inferred that the underlying reason was that Prof Evans had come to be regarded as a problem because of his whistleblowing, combined with a desire to shield the University from criticism and shut the matter down.

The wider pattern

The judgment is damaging not simply because individual complaints were upheld, but because of the institutional pattern identified by the Tribunal:

• an unsupported complaint against a whistleblower was allowed to continue for years;
• HR failed to exercise effective oversight or ownership;
• senior personnel repeatedly relied on processes and correspondence prepared by others;
• allegations were not properly investigated before decisions were made;
• procedural barriers made it difficult for Prof Evans to challenge the University’s handling of the matter; and
• as the matter progressed, the institutional priority appeared to shift from independently addressing his concerns to containing criticism of the University and shutting the matter down.

This is a vindication of the stance that Prof Evans has taken all along — that he was retaliated against after making whistleblowing disclosures.

For those who lacked the resources, position or stamina to fight back, the consequences of Cambridge University’s dysfunctional HR and legal divisions have been profound.

There have been many victims.

This victory is theirs too.

(The image is of Käthe Kollwitz’s woodcut ‘The Mothers’ )