Foreign Office Leaker Alleges Unfair Dismissal After BBC Journalist Accidentally Exposed Her Identity

Josie Stewart arriving for a hearing in central London at the Foreign Office whistleblower’s employment tribunal. The hearing will decide whether Stewart’s witness evidence contains material that would be covered by parliamentary privilege and is therefore inadmissible. Picture date: Wednesday September 20, 2023. 73793960 (Press Association via AP Images)

Former Foreign Office staffer Josie Stewart is fighting her dismissal from her role at the Foreign Office after a BBC Newsnight journalist tweeted screenshots of emails she’d leaked and inadvertently revealed her identity.

Stewart said that she had been “foolish and naive” in failing to redact herself from government emails shared with the journalist but that she does not think she “did the wrong thing.”

The screenshots were of sensitive emails that criticised the government’s handling of the 2021 Kabul evacuation in Afghanistan, as Taliban fighters closed in on the city.

The leaked emails highlighted an intervention by the then prime minister Boris Johnson, who had supposedly overruled existing policies to facilitate the evacuation of animals and charity staff of Kabul-based animal charity Nowzad, sidelining interpreters and other key personnel. Stewart had initially shared these concerns and emails anonymously with Newsnight.

Stewart now argues she was unfairly dismissed under the Employment Rights Act 1996 in a case that has sparked debates on the rights of civil servants in making public interest disclosures.

The ongoing tribunal is set to conclude on May 20.