A parliamentary aide and former partner of a Labour MP has won a claim against him for unfair dismissal with a tribunal also agreeing she was “isolated and marginalised” for a year before being sacked.
Elaina Cohen won two claims that she made against her former boss Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. But she lost other claims including that her dismissal was related to race, religion or belief.
Cohen had accused Mahmood of sacking her after she raised concerns with him under whistleblowing regulations about allegations of criminal behaviour by a fellow staffer.
Mahmood maintained that Cohen was dismissed for breaking protocols of parliamentary office and sending him “derogatory” and “offensive” emails, one of which described him as a “first-class idiot”, which was forwarded to the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer.
In his letter dismissing Cohen he accused her of repeatedly disrespecting him, calling him names and copying in additional people to intimidate him.
The tribunal heard, over a six-day hearing in May, that Cohen’s nickname for Mahmood in WhatsApp messages was “catfish”.
This week the tribunal published its findings, agreeing that Cohen was unfairly dismissed.
A claim of detriment because of a protected disclosure also succeeded because she had been “marginalised and isolated” from January 2020 until her dismissal a year later.
Cohen started to work in Mahmood’s MP office in 2003 and they were, in the early days, in a romantic relationship, which came to an end before the events leading to her dismissal. The tribunal heard evidence that their relationship had been strained and “dysfunctional for many years”.
On 11 October 2020, the pair spent a Sunday afternoon “duelling” over emails, which led to Mahmood forwarding their correspondence – including the “first-class idiot” comment – to Starmer.
A month later, the hearing heard, Cohen sent Mahmood a “crass and insensitive” email after the death of his father-in-law, and later sent him an “inappropriate and unnecessary” email, with a constituent copied in, which called him several names including being a “cold-hearted liar,” a “womanising con merchant” and “jealous”.
“This was in short something akin to a ‘poison pen’ email, which was calculated by the claimant to be offensive to the respondent,” the ruling by a panel led by Judge Tim Adkin stated.
A formal disciplinary case was then launched in January 2021 by Mahmood, who listed five allegations against Cohen. She was dismissed on 27 January that year.
The panel concluded that while three out of the five allegations listed by Mahmood were “ample reasonable grounds for belief in misconduct”, the way her dismissal had been carried out was “outside of the range of reasonable responses”.
The panel added it accepted one claim of detriment after Mahmood did not contact her during 2020.
“The tribunal accepts the claimant’s evidence that she did feel marginalised and isolated from January 2020 until her dismissal,” it said. “We find that the respondent, who had in recent years been in a fairly dysfunctional relationship with the claimant, offered very little by way of contact or support during the course of 2020. This was potentially detrimental treatment.”
Following the judgment Mahmood said in a statement that he was pleased with a judgment “that the principal reason that the claimant was dismissed was her conduct”. He also pointed to the dismissal of claims that the sacking was related to race, religion or belief.
A two-day remedy hearing is due to be heard on 29 and 30 September.
