Lawyers of a sacked Bradford trainee policewoman have won the right to privately interview a crucial witness in her industrial tribunal case against West Yorkshire Police.
A Home Office standing order states that officers are only allowed to be interviewed by outside parties if they have a senior officer present.
But the WPC's solicitors threatened to take the rule to the High Court in a test case asking for it to be overturned in a judicial review - and the police have backed down.
It is a double victory for the 31-year-old white woman, who claims sexual and racial discrimination and so cannot legally be named, as she has also been told her case has been backed by the Police Federation who will pay her legal fees running into thousands.
She told an industrial tribunal in Leeds in July that she was bullied by senior male officers who believed she would not make the grade because of an acrimonious divorce and family commitments.
The force denies this and says her work was of a poor standard.
The hearing was adjourned over arguments about her legal team's right to speak to some of the officers involved unaccompanied before calling them as witnesses to the tribunal.
Mohammed Hussain, part of the woman's legal team, told the Telegraph & Argus: "They are now prepared to make concessions to interview any officer as long as the officer is willing and as long as it is in his own time.
"I think they are trying to make it difficult in the case of the word willing. We don't want a situation where if you do give a statement, your card is marked.
"The police did not want this rule to be tested - that is why they have backed down. It means they are free to invoke it on another occasion."
But West Yorkshire Police solicitor Ajaz Hussain denied this.
"The main focus was to get this case back on. It would be unfortunate if this progressed to judicial review because it would have taken more than a year to be heard. It's nothing to do with whether we would like to invoke it again and future actions will bear that out."
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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