The HSA Group ethics award was not bestowed by moral archaeologists. HSA entered an awards process, supplied its preferred evidence and emerged with a trophy while the Cepac files remained outside the room.
HSA Group has won Culture & Ethics Initiative of the Year at the ICA Compliance Awards APAC & MENA 2026.
Cue the applause.
Bring out the polished trophy, the executive quotations and the photograph of serious people looking pleased beside a corporate logo. Somewhere, a communications team has already placed the award into a presentation titled Our Values in Action.
Perhaps a brass plaque will follow.
However, nobody stumbled across HSA Group while searching the corporate wilderness for spontaneous virtue.
The International Compliance Association did not arrive without warning. Its judges did not search every HSA subsidiary, inspect every dispute and interview every person who had encountered the group’s ethical culture at close range.
This was an awards process HSA chose to enter.
Entrants submitted their achievements. They selected the category, supplied the evidence and explained why they deserved recognition.
HSA wrote the homework.
Independent judges marked the pages HSA decided to hand them.
The chapters left in the basement were not part of the exam.
The sainthood came with an application form
Corporate award announcements rely on a useful illusion.
A business says it has been “recognised”. That word creates the impression that independent observers surveyed the entire market, spotted exceptional goodness and demanded a ceremony.
The reality is less biblical.
An organisation enters.
Next, somebody prepares the submission. Evidence is selected, achievements are polished and awkward material is quietly shown another door.
Finally, judges assess the entry.
That does not make the award dishonest. Nor does it mean the judges acted improperly.
Nevertheless, it is not a corporate canonisation.
The award reflects the initiative described in the submission. It does not certify every company, subsidiary, director, manager and lawyer connected with HSA Group as ethically spotless.
Yet that distinction soon disappears once the marketing department gets involved.
A narrow award becomes a broad declaration of virtue.
It enters press releases, recruitment campaigns and executive biographies. Before long, a prize for one submitted initiative has become evidence that the whole organisation possesses a superior moral bloodstream.
That is where the bullshit begins.
Was it pay-to-play?
I went looking for an entry fee.
So far, I cannot prove that HSA Group paid to enter the MENA award. In fact, the ICA’s comparable European awards have previously been free to enter.
Therefore, TCAP will not invent an invoice because it makes the headline easier.
The evidence supports something different.
This was apply-to-be-praised, not proven pay-to-play.
Entrants supplied their own cases. Independent judges then assessed those cases against the award criteria.
Consequently, HSA’s trophy does not prove that somebody conducted an unrestricted examination of the group’s ethical conduct.
It proves that HSA presented an initiative effectively enough to win.
The sainthood came with an application form, even if no bill followed it.
That difference matters.
What did HSA submit?
HSA says the award recognised its Compliance Ambassadors Network.
Fine.
Now publish the full winning entry.
Show the public exactly what the judges received.
What evidence supported the initiative?
How were its outcomes measured?
Which parts of the group fell within its scope?
Did the entry cover only certain operations, or did HSA present it as evidence of a wider group culture?
Those are basic questions.
Instead, the public receives the finished trophy shot. We see the result without the script, supporting documents or boundaries placed around the claim.
That arrangement suits corporate communications beautifully.
The organisation chooses the room.
It controls the lighting.
Then everyone is invited inside after the blood has been mopped from the floor.
The locked room called Cepac
HSA Group owns Cepac, the British packaging company at the centre of my disability-discrimination case.
The original allegation was simple.
I applied for a production role. During a telephone call on 21 August 2024, I say I was told that Cepac had selected me for an interview after the bank holiday.
During that conversation, I disclosed the mental-health-related reason for the gap in my employment history.
The promised follow-up never arrived.
Cepac denied that it had offered me an interview. According to its formal response, the call was merely an agency screening exercise.
That factual dispute deserved a merits hearing.
Witnesses could have answered questions. Recruitment records could have been examined. Moreover, the Tribunal could have tested the information passed through the agency chain.
Instead, the case went somewhere much darker.
The alleged discrimination slowly disappeared behind an expanding investigation of the disabled man who had complained about it.
HSA says it supports disabled people
The contrast is particularly grim because HSA Group has publicly promoted its work involving people with disabilities.
Its corporate material describes efforts to attract and retain disabled employees. HSA has also spoken about creating an inclusive workforce and supporting underrepresented groups.
Fine words.
However, inclusion is not tested when a communications department uploads a success story.
It is tested when a disabled person becomes inconvenient.
That is when the polished language leaves the room and the professional enforcers enter through the side door.
In my case, Cepac instructed Horsfield Menzies.
From that point onwards, the litigation developed a different appetite.
The company’s recruitment decision became only one part of the proceedings. Meanwhile, my correspondence, medical evidence, previous litigation, public criticism and complaints to regulators became an ever-growing banquet.
The claimant was no longer asking a question.
He was becoming the specimen.
The ethics of a five-figure threat
On 21 March 2025, Horsfield Menzies senior associate Sam Butler estimated Cepac’s costs at between £25,000 and £30,000.
Butler described my conduct as “quite frankly bizarre and utterly vexatious”. He then offered not to pursue those costs if I withdrew my claim.
The recipient was not another multinational company.
It was not an experienced solicitor or a silk sitting behind several junior barristers.
The warning went to a disabled litigant in person.
Cepac had a specialist law firm. It had experienced employment lawyers and the resources of a substantial international business group behind it.
I had myself.
Nevertheless, the company’s lawyers placed a potentially ruinous costs figure on the table.
Nobody needed to wave the weapon around.
The claimant could see it perfectly well.
Perhaps the HSA ethics initiative included a module on proportionality. If so, the lesson appears to have missed the flight to Britain.
When the lawyers called my medical centre
The medical-centre episode remains one of the clearest windows into the litigation style.
Horsfield Menzies contacted the practice responsible for one of my medical appointments.
Afterwards, Sam Butler told the Tribunal that another appointment could be arranged. He argued that moving my healthcare would be more expedient than moving the hearing.
The firm maintained that no private medical information had been disclosed.
That answer avoids the central issue.
Why did solicitors acting for a company accused of disability discrimination consider it proper to telephone the disabled claimant’s medical provider?
Why did they investigate alternative appointment availability?
Moreover, why did they use the result to resist his request concerning the hearing?
My medical care became a diary problem.
Cepac’s preferred timetable became sacred scripture.
Apparently, the appointment could move. The litigation machine could not.
“The People Focused Law Firm” had found a person.
Unfortunately, it focused on getting him out of the way.
Building the character autopsy
As the case continued, Horsfield Menzies examined my wider history.
Previous litigation entered the picture. So did blog posts, social-media material, regulatory complaints and extensive correspondence.
The purpose was brutally effective.
A recruitment decision has limits. It involves particular dates, records, conversations and witnesses.
A human being has no such boundary.
There is always another email.
Somewhere, another angry sentence waits to be removed from its context and pinned beneath glass. Given enough time, the lawyers can assemble an entire museum of a person’s worst moments.
Then the tour begins.
Here is the frustration.
Over there, behind the velvet rope, is the profanity.
Finally, in the refrigerated cabinet, we have the claimant’s deteriorating trust in institutions.
After enough exhibits, the original allegation starts to look like an administrative error made by somebody in the gift shop.
That is how a discrimination claim becomes a character autopsy.
The disabled man lies open on the table. Every scar receives a label.
Meanwhile, nobody asks who brought in the knife.
Complaining became part of the alleged misconduct
I contacted regulators, MPs and public bodies because I believed the ordinary process had failed.
Rather than treating those approaches as attempts to obtain accountability, Cepac’s case used them as further evidence against me.
Complaints became escalation.
Requests for scrutiny became disruption.
Persistence became obsession.
As a result, the litigation created a perfect corporate trap.
One institution refused to act, so I approached another.
Each refusal increased my concern. However, every further complaint then became another entry in the conduct dossier.
The more doors remained closed, the more aggressively my knocking was characterised.
Silence became the only safe behaviour.
That is a splendid arrangement for powerful organisations. The system fails the individual, then punishes him for noticing.
Perhaps somebody should enter it for an award.
A strike-out under appeal is not an acquittal
This is not a sanitised account of the outcome.
The Tribunal took a severe view of my conduct.
Its published reconsideration judgment records that the claim was struck out after prolonged case management and repeated warnings. It refers to findings of unreasonable, scandalous and vexatious conduct.
The Tribunal said it had considered my disability, vulnerability and the alleged connection between my conduct and disability-related distress. It concluded that those matters did not prevent strike-out.
It also rejected my argument that the respondents’ alleged conduct justified or adequately explained the scale and persistence of my actions.
TCAP does not pretend those findings were never made.
However, the strike-out and costs order were made in circumstances I dispute and consider deeply dubious. I have lodged an appeal with the Employment Appeal Tribunal challenging them.
Daniel Rubin, a Horsfield Menzies partner whose professional profile emphasises reputation management and investor confidence, appeared for Cepac at the hearing on 24 April 2026.
I did not attend after raising concerns about late material, uncertainty over the hearing files and my ability to participate safely.
The hearing proceeded without me.
The Tribunal struck out the claim and imposed a £20,000 costs order. It later refused my reconsideration application.
Those orders remain operative unless overturned. However, they are not an uncontested final chapter. The strike-out and costs decision is now under appellate challenge.
The appeal does not itself establish that the Tribunal was wrong. Equally, HSA and Cepac cannot honestly present the disputed first-instance outcome as an uncomplicated vindication while the Employment Appeal Tribunal is being asked to review it.
Most importantly, no full merits hearing decided whether the promised interview existed.
No merits judgment found that the mental-health disclosure played no part in what happened.
Cepac denied discrimination. The Tribunal did not test that denial through a full trial of the recruitment evidence.
Those statements can coexist.
The conduct findings are part of the record.
So are the disputed circumstances surrounding the hearing, the pending EAT review and the complete absence of a merits determination.
Corporate storytelling prefers cleaner endings. “Contested strike-out and costs order under appeal” lacks the showroom finish of “company cleared of discrimination”.
Only one of those descriptions reflects the present position.
A strike-out under appellate review is not an acquittal.
It is a disputed procedural outcome that prevented the central recruitment evidence from receiving a full trial.
By the end, the disabled claimant’s conduct had become more important than the alleged discrimination that brought him into the building.
Corporate defence lawyers may call that a result.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has not yet supplied the final word.
Ethics are what happens after the brochure ends
HSA Group operates in Yemen under extraordinarily difficult conditions.
Its humanitarian and economic role is real. The group employs thousands of people and supplies essential goods in a country devastated by conflict and deprivation.
None of that should be erased.
However, good work in one place does not purchase moral immunity elsewhere.
A food programme does not answer a disability allegation in Britain.
A social initiative cannot disinfect aggressive litigation.
Likewise, an ethics award does not travel through every subsidiary like holy water.
Corporate ethics are not measured only when the organisation selects the evidence.
They are measured when somebody powerless makes an accusation.
How does the business respond?
Does it investigate openly?
Will it show restraint?
Can it tolerate scrutiny?
Alternatively, does it instruct expensive professionals to examine the claimant until his distress becomes the defence?
Those moments reveal more than any values page.
The brochure ends.
Then the real organisation walks into the room.
Did the judges see the Cepac files?
The ICA judges may have assessed the winning initiative rigorously.
However, what did they know about Cepac?
Were they told about the disability-discrimination case?
Did HSA disclose the costs warning sent to a disabled litigant in person?
Were the judges informed that Cepac’s solicitors contacted my medical centre?
Did the submission mention the vast collections of correspondence, public criticism and previous litigation used in the conduct case?
Perhaps none of those matters fell within the award’s scope.
That may be entirely proper.
Yet HSA cannot use a narrowly assessed initiative to create a broad impression of group-wide ethical excellence while treating contradictory evidence as irrelevant because it occurred elsewhere.
The trophy cannot expand for publicity and contract under questioning.
Either it tells us something meaningful about HSA Group’s culture or it recognises one selected initiative.
HSA should decide which claim it wishes to make.
Publish the entry
There is a straightforward solution.
Publish the winning submission.
Show the criteria, supporting evidence and stated scope. Explain whether the initiative applied across HSA Group or only within particular operations.
Then address Cepac.
HSA should explain how the conduct of its British subsidiary fits beside its public commitment to disabled people.
It should also explain whether the group reviewed the case from an ethical or compliance perspective.
Did anybody inside HSA ask why Cepac’s lawyers contacted my medical provider?
Was the scale of the costs threat reviewed?
Did the group examine whether the litigation remained proportionate?
Furthermore, did HSA’s compliance function consider the reputational and ethical consequences of turning a disability claim into an exhaustive attack on the claimant’s character?
Those questions belong in any serious discussion of corporate culture.
Otherwise, “ethics” becomes another decorative word nailed above the emergency exit.
A trophy is not an acquittal
The ICA award does not prove that HSA purchased recognition.
I found no evidence of that.
Nor have I found evidence that the judges behaved improperly.
The problem lies elsewhere.
The award reflects an entry. It does not represent an independent audit of HSA Group’s entire ethical history.
It does not answer my allegations against Cepac.
Moreover, it does not cleanse the litigation conducted by Horsfield Menzies, Sam Butler and Daniel Rubin.
A trophy is not an acquittal.
It is a trophy.
HSA may place it on a pedestal and photograph it from every available angle.
TCAP will place it beside the Tribunal papers.
On one side sits the polished award.
On the other sits a disabled claimant who says a promised interview vanished after he disclosed his mental health.
Beside him lie the costs threat, the medical-centre contact, the character evidence and the claim that never received a full merits judgment.
One exhibit was prepared for celebration.
The other appeared when the vulnerable person refused to leave quietly.
Readers can decide which tells them more about ethics.
Keep the trophy
The HSA Group ethics award recognises a submitted initiative. It does not represent an independent audit of every HSA company, director, lawyer or dispute.
It does not answer my allegation against Cepac.
And it does not erase the costs threat, the medical-centre contact or the expansion of a recruitment claim into a prolonged examination of the claimant.
Most importantly, it does not supply the merits judgment that never happened.
Instead, the claim was struck out and a £20,000 costs order imposed in circumstances TCAP considers dubious. Both are now subject to review by the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
HSA can keep the trophy.
Polish it.
Frame the photographs.
Allow LinkedIn to perform its customary burial of critical thought beneath executive congratulations.
However, spare us the fantasy that an independent moral authority searched every corner of HSA Group and pronounced it clean.
HSA entered an awards process.
It presented its Compliance Ambassadors Network. Independent judges assessed the case placed before them and selected it as the winner.
Meanwhile, the Cepac file waited outside.
One exhibit was assembled for applause.
The other accumulated after a disabled applicant refused to accept that a promised interview had simply dissolved into administrative weather.
HSA brought the trophy.
TCAP brought the documents.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal may yet bring another judgment.
Now let ethics explain the difference.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- HSA Group wins Culture & Ethics Initiative of the Year at the ICA Compliance Awards MENA 2026
- ICA Compliance Awards APAC & MENA 2026
- ICA Culture & Ethics Initiative of the Year category
- ICA Compliance Awards entry and judging process
- HSA Group: cultivating an inclusive workforce
- HSA Group corporate brochure identifying its British packaging interests
- Employment Tribunal reconsideration judgment in Thompson v Cepac Limited and Page Outsourcing UK Limited
- Horsfield Menzies: The People Focused Law Firm
- Daniel Rubin profile
- Sam Butler profile
- Employment Tribunal pleadings, correspondence, orders and hearing materials in Thompson v Cepac Limited and Page Outsourcing UK Limited
- Sam Butler’s correspondence concerning estimated costs and the claimant’s medical appointment
- Horsfield Menzies submissions and supporting materials concerning strike-out, costs, litigation history and online publications