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Government officials have confirmed they’re gagged from speaking about a case in which recruiters discriminated against an individual with ADHD and autism due to a “court order”.
People and Corporate Services Director Mark Grimley made the admission yesterday as he, the Chief Minister and the Vice-Chair of the States Employment Board (SEB) were grilled by the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel.
It clarifies some of the mystery surrounding an unprompted statement issued by the Government on Tuesday.
In it, the Government said it was sorry that an individual had been "treated differently and unintentionally discriminated against" as a result of their hidden disabilities, namely ADHD and Autism.
When Express had asked about the nature of the discrimination, it simply received a response from a spokesperson simply saying: "I'm afraid nothing more can be said about this."
CLICK TO READ: The first statement released by the SEB admitting discrimination.
Then on Thursday, a fresh statement was made. It said that the individual had made a "claim for disability discrimination related to a recruitment process", and that they "felt it best to work to repair the issues that have arisen, and successfully support the individual into the workplace."
Following this, Express asked if any financial agreement has been reached. A response is yet to be received.
During yesterday's Scrutiny hearing, however, confirmation was given that the reason the Government cannot speak about the incident was because they were legally gagged.
Following a question to the Chief Minister from Deputy Steve Ahier asking him to explain the situation in his position as Chair of the SEB, Senator Le Fondré passed the question over to Mr Grimley, and SEB Vice-Chair and Assistant Chief Minister, Constable Richard Buchanan.
Pictured: Constable Richard Buchanan said "in any organisation with 7,000 employees, life is never going to be perfect and there will always be incidents where things happen that we regret," but that the key thing is the board had taken "action."
"The only comment I would make is that as we said in the statement, we can't set out or talk about the specifics, but clearly it's a regrettable lapse and we have taken steps to make sure that it doesn't happen again," Constable Buchanan remarked.
He added that "to the individual concerned, I should just like to once again publicly apologise that they were put through that and to assure them that we've done everything we can to ensure there won't be a repetition of that event.
"I mean, if I'm being realistic, in any organisation with 7,000 employees, life is never going to be perfect and there will always be incidents where things happen that we regret.
"They key thing is we've taken action as quickly as we can and we've apologised to the individual concerned, and lessons... have been learnt and will be acted on."
Mr Grimley added: "It's unusual for a case to get to the States Employment Board, but they considered this one very carefully because it's important to the States Employment Board around diversity and inclusion, and so this was escalated to them to understand the nature of the case.
"Whilst we can't go into the individual because they are protected and the case is protected by a court order... what we can say is, I met in person with the individual on behalf of the SEB, and we sought to resolve the nature of the complaints.
"The individual themselves is very, very sensible about what they were expecting from the SEB, and that was just to make sure that people were aware that particularly hidden disabilities should not be taken for granted nor should people make assumptions about how best to work with people with hidden disabilities.
"In this particular case, what we've done is been able to do is support the individual, have conversations with the managers who were involved - they are ongoing, I'm facilitating those. And the individual, we've found a way to ensure they can join the workplace, so there's actually actually a positive outcome to this.
"The statement from the board though is heartfelt, it was a very disappointing situation, and I think it's a first really for the board to actually make such a public statement, because they don't want to hide away from the fact a mistake has been made and they are very clear about the diversity and inclusion approach to that end.
"To that end they are signing off a new diversity and inclusion strategy next month as part of that, neurodiversity is going to be one of the groups that's being set up and we're actively working with neurodiversity organisations on the island to draw up that aspect of the work that we're doing."
Gov admits disability discrimination in unprompted statement
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