Hebden Bridge News

Steph Booth Hounded Out For Whistleblowing On ‘Chaotic’ Charity

The Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Calder Valley, Steph Booth, has been subject to a “vitriolic” campaign to “destroy” her reputation after she complained that staff working for a children’s charity were downloading porn, an employment tribunal has heard.

Speaking at a hearing in Manchester against her former employers, COOL UK Ltd, based in Burnley and Manchester, Mrs Booth said the charity’s boss, Gareth Binding, had constantly brushed off serious concerns about the “chaotic and unprofessional” nature of the organisation.

“at staff meetings i.e. very publicly, people were asked if they had any ‘dirt’ on her by Mr Binding and if so he wanted to hear it.”

Mrs Booth worked in a management role for the local authority-funded organisation, which offered a “radical and experimental alternative” to traditional education for youngsters that had been excluded from school.

She said she’d raised concerns about a member of staff buying pornography “on a regular basis each week from a man who would come to the unit” only to be told she was being “too fussy”. She added that another member of staff was sent to jail for driving students around while banned and that she was worried “the students were being failed”.

Mrs Booth says she was subject to a campaign of victimisation for raising these complaints, and subsequently dismissed in what she described as a “sham redundancy”. Following her departure from the company last year she said Mr Binding had tried to “sabotage” her campaign to become Calder Valley’s MP by “concocting” untrue stories for the press and urging the Labour Party to deselect her.

“Mr Binding put me through a sham redundancy exercise which was a mask for my sacking as a whistleblower,” she said.

“He wrote numerous letters regarding my suitability as a Labour Party Candidate which were vindictive and designed to destroy my reputation in the local community and wider in the Labour Party,” she added. “One letter he wrote was copied to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and another letter dated 16 June, 2009 was addressed to the Prime Minister directly.”

Simon Walker, a building tutor and former work colleague of Mrs Booth at the charity, told the tribunal that the organization had “woefully inadequate resources” and “chronic” funding.

He said that within a very short time of Ms Booth leaving COOL UK Ltd, “at staff meetings i.e. very publicly, people were asked if they had any ‘dirt’ on her by Mr Binding and if so he wanted to hear it. This happened on a number of occasions, directly from Mr. Binding himself and also through other senior members of staff.”

Mrs Booth is claiming unfair dismissal, breach of contract and suffering detriment or dismissal due to exercising her rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act and on health and safety grounds.