Judgment approved by the court 50. Vaultex UK Ltd v Bialas However, the substance of the tribunal’s reasoning, said to be in support of that conclusion, is to be found, in terms, in the four paragraphs [53] to [56] where the tribunal expressly sets out the four reasons why it says it has reached the conclusion that dismissal was outside the band of reasonable responses. These paragraphs should, of course, be read fairly, as a whole, and against the backdrop of the earlier findings of fact in the context of the decision as a whole. 51. In the first of these paragraphs, [53], the tribunal makes the point that the respondent’s choices were not limited to either dismissing or doing nothing at all. It had the option of imposing some lesser sanction. As Ms Clarke fairly submits, however, this observation by itself does not entail that the option of dismissing was beyond the band of reasonable responses; and, indeed, the tribunal itself acknowledged that point in the final sentence of that same paragraph. 52. That said, the tribunal’s real point in this paragraph, it appears to us, appears to have related to Mr Babbage’s concern about undermining the respondent’s EDI campaign and policies. The tribunal says that doing nothing would involve undermining the respondent’s campaign and reputation. This suggests that the tribunal was of the view that, so long as some sanction was imposed, this would not undermine the respondent’s policies or campaign. This does support the contention that the tribunal did not consider whether Mr Babbage was reasonably entitled to take the view, as it had expressly found he did (at [40]), that to give only a warning for this particular conduct would send a wrong signal in relation to the respondent’s commitment to these policies. 53. Turning to the second reason, paragraph [54], this relates to the claimant having offered apologies and to undertake new training. Again, the wording of this paragraph is troubling. The tribunal states that the claimant may not have had the fundamental knowledge to understand why the “joke” was racist, and comments on what it considers could not have escaped Mr Babbage’s attention. This reads like the tribunal reflecting on what it made of what went through the claimant’s mind and/or what it considered that Mr Babbage ought to have made of that. What the tribunal does not discuss in this © EAT 2024 Page 19 [2024] EAT 19