Covert Recording of Disciplinary Hearings

'I am an employer and recently held a disciplinary hearing with an employee. I suspect they were covertly recording the meeting on their phone. If this is correct and clearly they did this without our consent then presumably such evidence could not be relied on by the employee in later tribunal proceedings?'

Under The Industrial Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2005, Schedule 1 Rule 14(2), the Tribunal is not “bound by any statutory provision or rule of law relating to the admissibility of evidence in proceedings”. Therefore, whether a covert recording of a disciplinary hearing is admissible will turn on the facts of each particular situation.