Breaking News: My Mother Fears For Her Medical Privacy
My mother is scared to give evidence against Cepac Limited at the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
She fears that Horsfield Menzies solicitor Sam Butler might telephone her GP, enquire about her medical appointments and subsequently use whatever information he obtains against her.
The situation is grave. Her confidence has been shattered, her prospective testimony compromised and the integrity of the entire judicial process placed in considerable jeopardy.
Naturally, we’re hoping to bring this extraordinary development before Employment Judge Andrew James at the earliest possible opportunity. Well, me, not her.
After all, Judge James has already demonstrated considerable receptiveness to an account of a witness’s fears delivered by somebody other than the witness.
Which is tremendously convenient, because my Mam intends to sit this one out.
I’ll therefore be relaying her fears myself.
No witness statement. No direct testimony. Just me, informing the court what somebody else is frightened of.
And before anybody starts demanding evidence, might I remind them that we are dealing with a very serious allegation of potential witness intimidation?
The last thing this frightened woman needs is somebody pestering her to establish whether she’s actually frightened.
Fortunately, Daniel Rubin of Horsfield Menzies has already demonstrated the considerable advantages of this arrangement.
Welcome to the Peter Grey Standard.
The Peter Grey Standard: Fear By Solicitor
Peter Grey was identified through spokesman Daniel Rubin as Cepac’s principal prospective witness in my disability discrimination proceedings.
I had never met him. Never spoken to him. Never contacted him. Never threatened him. Never published anything about him before his alleged fear became an issue in the litigation.
Nevertheless, Rubin informed the Employment Tribunal that Grey feared what I might publish about him.
Not what I had actually published about him.
What I might publish.
A solicitor telling a judge what a man I’d never met was frightened I might do to him.
And that reported fear subsequently became a factor in the destruction of my discrimination claim.
What a magnificent fucking evidential system.
Employment Judge Andrew James recorded Rubin’s argument at paragraph 111 of his April 2026 judgment. Even compelling Grey to attend a hearing would supposedly not resolve the problem, because his evidence might be affected by the possibility of future public criticism.
By paragraph 170, James was referring to the intimidation felt by Cepac’s key witness as an additional factor supporting his conclusion that a fair trial was impossible.
The published judgment does not identify sworn testimony from Grey establishing the fear attributed to him. It records Rubin’s representations, although other supporting material may have existed in the case papers.
Nevertheless, Grey’s reported intimidation formed part of the reasoning supporting strike-out. Other conduct findings also contributed to that decision, but the witness issue was expressly included.
My disability discrimination claim was extinguished without a merits hearing, and Cepac received a £20,000 costs order.
What an extraordinarily powerful thing it is to be frightened in somebody else’s submissions.
Sam Butler And The Terrifying Possibility Of A Telephone Call
Naturally, my mother’s concerns have a substantial historical foundation.
Horsfield Menzies previously contacted my medical centre during the proceedings, obtained information about alternative appointment availability and subsequently used that information when opposing postponement arrangements.
So we’re not discussing some fantastical possibility plucked from the darkest recesses of an overactive imagination.
We’re discussing the possibility of a solicitor doing something broadly similar to an action already documented in the litigation history.
My mother fears that Sam Butler might telephone her GP. Horsfield Menzies has already demonstrated a professional curiosity about my medical appointments, so the prospect is particularly distressing.
And before anybody starts demanding proof of her apprehension, I would remind them that we are dealing with a frightened witness. Subjecting her to questioning about whether she’s actually frightened would surely compound the trauma.
I’ll speak for her. Daniel Rubin did a splendid job communicating Peter Grey’s fears, and Judge Andrew James considered them sufficiently significant to feature in his reasons for extinguishing my discrimination claim.
I trust an identical standard will apply here.
If Peter Grey can be frightened of something I haven’t written, my Mam can be frightened of a telephone call that hasn’t happened.
And if that sounds like an utterly fucking ridiculous basis for judicial intervention, congratulations.
You’ve grasped the point.
Judge Andrew James: An Urgent Request For Equal Treatment
Meanwhile, I’m not sleeping tonight.
What if Employment Judge Andrew James attacks me in my sleep?
You never know.
Perhaps he will emerge from the wardrobe. Perhaps he will arrive accompanied by a judicial colleague. Perhaps the entire Newcastle Employment Tribunal will descend upon my bedroom clutching skeleton arguments and demanding to know why I haven’t filed a witness statement.
Do I have any evidence that this will happen?
Don’t be ridiculous.
This is a matter of what might happen. The potential consequences are sufficiently distressing without subjecting me to the additional indignity of proving that the threat exists.
Surely the possibility of a future event can be transformed into a serious judicial concern if somebody describes it with sufficient conviction?
Ideally, somebody wearing a suit and charging by the hour.
I therefore propose that my own fears be relayed to an appropriate tribunal by a professionally qualified spokesman. Preferably somebody who can describe my anticipated distress with an authority entirely disproportionate to his personal knowledge of it.
If challenged, he can explain that requiring evidence misses the point.
My confidence has already been affected.
The damage has been done.
And somewhere in the distance, a wardrobe door creaks.
Peter Grey: What Was The Witness Supposed To Know?
Beneath this magnificent carnival of anticipated calamities sits an inconvenient factual question.
What evidence was Peter Grey actually supposed to provide?
He was identified as Cepac’s principal prospective witness, and his position as Conversion Manager suggests a potentially relevant operational management role.
Whether he personally participated in my recruitment remains to be established.
Did he receive my CV? Did he decide I wasn’t shortlisted? Did Page Outsourcing discuss the proposed interview with him? Did he know about my mental-health disclosure?
On 21 August 2024, Page Outsourcing telephoned me about a production role at Cepac. During that conversation, an interview was discussed for the following week. My contemporaneous WhatsApp messages recorded my understanding that an interview had been offered.
Cepac subsequently maintained that I had not been shortlisted.
That factual dispute could have been examined through recruitment records, correspondence and witness testimony.
Instead, the proceedings ended without a merits hearing.
The reported fear of what I might write about Grey became one of the considerations reinforcing the conclusion that such a hearing was impossible.
And what a delicious irony that produced.
Before Grey’s alleged fear entered the proceedings, I had never heard of him. I had no reason to write about him. His name became relevant to my public commentary precisely because his supposed concerns were introduced into litigation and subsequently recorded in a published judgment.
A man who reportedly feared becoming the subject of public criticism became publicly relevant through the legal argument about his fear of becoming publicly relevant.
An industrial-strength Streisand effect, delivered with a solicitor’s invoice.
No Direct Testimony? The Spokesman Will Handle It
Hearsay evidence can be admitted in an Employment Tribunal. That is entirely orthodox. For example, I heard through The Quiet Mancunian that Cepac’s owners have links to terrorism.
However, admissibility and evidential weight are different matters. An advocate’s submission about what a witness fears is not itself sworn testimony from that witness.
Consequently, the questions raised by James’s judgment are straightforward.
What was the evidence establishing Grey’s fear? What had he personally communicated? How was the anticipated effect on his testimony assessed? Why would a witness order or suitable protective directions fail to preserve a fair hearing?
And why should anticipated future criticism necessarily prevent somebody from giving truthful evidence about a recruitment decision?
There may be answers in material not identified in the published judgment. What interests me is how clearly those answers were established before the reported intimidation became part of the justification for terminating the claim.
Meanwhile, my mother’s concerns are considerably easier to administer.
I’ll explain what she’s frightened of. The court can accept my account, and we can all avoid the distressing business of actually asking the witness.
Should anybody object, I shall remind them that Daniel Rubin has already furnished an excellent example of the technique.
I trust the same evidential approach will be available to a litigant in person.
Otherwise, one might begin to suspect that the magic isn’t in the evidence at all.
It’s in the fucking letterhead.
Pray For My Mam, And Pray For Grey
We shall endeavour to place this urgent development before Judge James as quickly as possible.
I anticipate that he will appreciate the gravity of the situation, given his previous consideration of the fear attributed to Peter Grey.
My mother’s medical privacy could be threatened by a hypothetical telephone call. My sleep could be interrupted by an imaginary judicial assault. The possibilities are endless, and the supply of future catastrophes is limited only by my imagination.
In the meantime, I remain troubled by the extraordinary power of a solicitor’s account of somebody else’s emotional condition.
I didn’t quite understand the magnitude of being frightened in somebody else’s submissions until I witnessed the horror etched across my mother’s face.
Pray for my Mam, and pray for Grey.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project