Mercury Prize winner Speech Debelle ordered to pay £10,000 to Arts Council England after utilizing work card to purchase takeaways – as decide slams rapper’s ‘dreadful’ race discrimination bid when she was instructed to pay a reimbursement

A Mercury Prize-winning rapper has been ordered to pay Arts Council England £10,000 after suing them for race discrimination – because they asked her to repay them for takeaways she bought on her work card.

Corynne Elliot, known as Speech Debelle, claimed the organisation was ‘bugging’ her for asking for four months’ worth of food and taxi journeys she had paid for with a procurement card.

As part of her case, the 41-year-old also told an employment tribunal that being asked to talk about her knowledge of hip-hop culture was harassment.

After her case was dismissed, the charity sought to recover their legal costs from Miss Elliot and her solicitors, saying it could have been up to £40,000.

In June this year, she setup a fundraiser to ‘raise awareness and case costs’ which only saw 60 people donate £1,273 out of the £5,000 goal. 

However, she has now been ordered to pay £9,870 with an employment judge declaring that bringing these discrimination allegations was ‘dreadful and unacceptable’ behaviour.

EJ Garry Smart said: ‘Discrimination allegations are damaging to people emotionally, physically and reputationally, after all, any serious allegations are unpleasant and can result, even if the allegations have been disproven beyond any doubt, in the accused becoming stigmatised just as much as the accuser might be.’

Miss Elliot won the Mercury Prize in 2009 for her debut album, Speech Therapy, and a remix of the lead single ‘Spinnin’ was an official anthem for the London 2012 Olympics.

Since then she has released two more critically acclaimed albums, Freedom of Speech and Tantil Before I Breathe as well as appearing on Celebrity Masterchef. 

The tribunal, held in central London, heard that Miss Elliot started working for Arts Council England as a relationship manager in August 2017.

It was there that she started the Black Influencers Masterclass and Programme which helped artists of colour to access funding.

In December 2020 the charity began trying to recover money from Miss Elliot for unauthorised use of her procurement card.

This was due to the fact that over a period of four months she had used the work card to pay for takeaways, taxi journeys and a driving license renewal, the tribunal heard – but she claimed she had been using the wrong card in her Apple Pay wallet.

She tried to claim the discrimination began in late 2019, after her performance at work had been questioned, but an internal grievance process did not uphold her claims.

In November 2019 when a senior manager, Claire Toogood, asked to meet with Miss Elliot about some time critical work she had not done.

At the time, the rapper was speaking to another relationship manager when Ms Toogood ‘politely interrupted’ their conversation to tell the rapper she was ready to meet – and Miss Elliot asked for 10 minutes.

Then, during the meeting Miss Elliot tried to get another colleague to write the letters and when Ms Toogood said this was not possible she laughed at her before ‘abruptly’ leaving the meeting. 

Miss Elliot told the tribunal that Ms Toogood’s behaviour was an example of ‘violence against diverse people’ and that she had been ‘hostile and angry’ during the meeting.

However, EJ Smart concluded that the interaction had nothing to do with race and that Miss Elliot ‘did not genuinely believe’ this was discrimination.

The rapper also claimed that her line manager, Huey Walker, knew about wider racism concerns at the arts organisation and did nothing about them.

This was based on text messages in 2019 between Mr Walker, who is mixed race, and Natalie Pryce who told him that she had heard there was a ‘division’ in the music team between black and white employees and that people thought she was ‘doing no work’.

Mr Walker said they would discuss it tomorrow and Ms Pryce responded that it was ‘sad’ they had to work harder to ‘appease the white members of the team’.

EJ Smart found that Miss Elliot did not know if any action had or had not been taken after these messages and that they were not direct discrimination against the rapper.

Two years later, in 2021, Miss Elliot alleges that during a one to one meeting Mr Walker told her she needed to ‘prove her worth’ to employees who believed ‘black staff don’t work’.

She argued that this was Mr Walker conducting racism ‘on behalf of’ Arts Council England.

However, he said there was a discussion about Miss Elliot proving herself but that it had nothing to do with race.

EJ Smart said he was ‘not persuaded’ that Mr Walker had said ‘black staff don’t work’ and that this conversation could not be linked to the 2019 comments.

Miss Elliot also claimed that she had been harassed when her co-worker, Chole Brooks, said at a 2018 away day that she was ‘disappointed’ Miss Elliot wasn’t there because she wanted to learn more about hip-hop music and culture.

The rapper told the tribunal that she viewed this as being asked to do more work because of her race.

The tribunal found this was not a ‘reasonable’ view because it was not a requirement to do more work just an ‘expression of desire’ to talk to Miss Elliot about her specialism.

Lastly, she also complained about an ‘insulting and unsolicited’ email sent while she was on sick leave, the way her occupational health assessments were handled and a lack of support from her manager.

These were all dismissed by the tribunal.

In August 2021 Miss Elliot resigned from Arts Council England and her employment ended the following month. 

An Arts Council England spokesperson said: ‘The unanimous judgment of the tribunal was that the claims against Arts Council England should be dismissed, and that Arts Council England staff acted professionally and appropriately.

‘We take our responsibility as custodians of taxpayers’ money seriously and therefore, based on the exceptional comments of the judge on the merits of Arts Council England’s case as the claimant, we sought to recover a proportion of legal costs.’