A FORMER Honda employee is taking legal action against the company for unfair dismissal after he was sacked following an avalanche of allegations, which he claims was a misunderstanding of banter.

Gurprit Lal, who worked for the company at South Marston, for almost ten years, had his contract terminated in 2014 on the grounds of gross misconduct for allegedly making racist and offensive comments to his colleagues.

Today Mr Lal, 41, who received a promotion the previous year working at managerial level in the engineering department, denied these claims at an employment tribunal in Bristol. The hearing had been opened in December, and was concluded during its second day today.

Honda alleged he had shown bullying behaviour to people during work and on Facebook.

But Mr Lal insisted this was part of the factory shop banter that continued outside work on social media in a group chat, in which he was the butt of jokes too.

The hearing was told by his barrister Richard Owen-Thomas that around seven allegations, some historic, were purely ‘shop floor swearing and banter.’

And he said the claims about Mr Lal’s behaviour were only unfairly brought to light following an incident on September, 5 2014, involving colleague Jeremy Lumbers, in which Mr Lal was allegedly strangled and assaulted.

Mr Owen-Thomas also said the company “didn’t want Mr Lal’s version of events” and had already decided Mr Lal was to be dismissed during the disciplinary process.

It is claimed Mr Lal told Mr Lumbers: “Why don’t you calm down and suckle on your mum’s nipple.”

Mr Lal admitted he told his colleague this, but only said it after the situation was getting out of hand and accepted it was childish. Mr Lumbers was given a written warning.

This then led to investigations and disciplinary meetings where complaints of previous offensive comments were put to Mr Lal, some which had not been raised before.

Mr Owen-Thomas said the remark made to Mr Lumbers would not on its own have been enough to justify dismissal and there should have been a conversation to say people were taking offence to his language.

“The investigation cannot support a reasonable belief of gross misconduct," he said.

"Underneath all that [the allegations] is simply a bit of occasional swearing and banter between colleagues.”

Chris Harries, acting for Honda, said the ‘banter’ went beyond what was acceptable and said Mr Lal was inconsistent in giving his evidence.

He also said the behaviour was a breach of the company’s equal opportunities policy, in which Mr Lal received a copy of in 2013, and that racial discrimination was a serious allegation.

He rejected Mr Lal’s argument that his colleagues did not come forward and support his claims that that it was friendly banter because they were scared to admit it due to ‘bullying style of management’.

He also said Mr Lal was the subject of an investigation in which he tried to run over a colleague in the car park. But CCTV showed he was not near the person in question.

Regional employment judge Jonathan Parkin said he would reserve judgement to look over the case and would let both parties know the outcome in due course.