Eco or ego Legacy Ltd: How a Labour peer was caught in the crossfire of an Irish company brought to its knees by ” mismanagement and intransigence “

Posted on December 20, 2022 by davidhencke

Baroness Mary Goudie Official Portrait pic credit: parliament.uk

Last week the House of Lords Conduct Committee recommended Baroness Mary Goudie, a Labour peer, be suspended for six months from Parliament for entering a consultancy with an Irish eco company, which was declared late and providing advice to the firm who they should lobby in Parliament.

Normally this blog would condemn utterly any public figure who sells their expertise in Parliament for financial gain but there seem to be some rather peculiar circumstances in this case that make this judgement unduly harsh. Yes Baroness Goudie should be punished for breaching the Nolan code of conduct but her actions pale into insignificance compared to the behaviour of the bust company itself.

Obviously the role of the company is outside the remit of the House of Lords Conduct Committee but researching the history of this short lived firm reveals an extraordinary saga of events and Baroness Goudie seems to be left taking the rap.

For a start the case against her has been brought SIX years after the event in Parliament and FOUR years after a petition in the Dublin High Court forced it to go bankrupt. And the complainant has turned up with six year old emails, her consultancy contract worth 20,000 Euros over 10 months and internal corporate details of what she promised to do for them. It would suggest the person was either a member of the firm or knew someone there.

Parliamentary meetings never took place

She did plan to facilitate a meeting in Parliament where the directors could lobby an MP who belonged to an all party group on funerals and bereavement and write to the permanent secretaries of DEFRA and the Ministry of Justice. But the meeting never took place and the MP met the directors of ecoLegacy without Baroness Goudie being there. And there is no trace of any letter ever being written to the permanent secretaries.

Wrongly used the House of Lords library to help company

She wrongly used the House of Lords library to prepare a report for use by the company but as to be explained later it really didn’t tell them anything as the firm was using a new untried technology for cremation. Nor did she use debates in the Lords to promote the firm but was very late in registering her interest.

Now if we examine the firm its management record is appalling. It describes its business as “Provider of alternative processes to burial and cremation. The company offers burial and cremation alternatives that turn human deceased bodies into calcium and carbon powders and returns the powders in a biodegradable urn and seed which can be grown as a tree, helping families to remember their loved ones who departed.”

This sounds a lovely eco-friendly idea and the directors sought huge sums from wealthy American investors in ” start up ” schemes promising good returns. By the time it went bankrupt according to the Irish Business Post it had raised 7.2 million Euros and was running at a big loss.

Judge Deirdre Murphy at the Kennedy Summer School. Pic credit: Kennedy Summer School

The most devastating critique came from an Irish Judge Deirdre Murphy when she heard a petition from The William Jay Gencarella Family Trust, based in the US, in 2018

Her judgement read: “Two founding members of the company Tony Ennis and Brian McKimm, featured extensively in the evidence adduced on the hearing, both on affidavit and on cross-examination, but neither provided direct evidence to the court. The hearing was not so much “ Hamlet” without the prince as “ Two Gentlemen of Verona” without the two gentleman. During the course of the hearing there were allegations and counter-allegations that both had misappropriated company funds over the years. The court has the impression that in many respects the hearing of this petition was a proxy war between the two founding members, in which the petitioner has been ill-served and was liable to suffer collateral damage.”

She “appointed Declan Taite as liquidator to EcoLegacy Ltd which she said had been “brought to its knees” by the “mismanagement and intransigence” of one of its founders, Tony Ennis.

In another case before a judge in Dallas, Texas, three groups, Fox Bend Development Associates, Ltd., Fred and Michele Secker, and Jeffrey Hicks Trust 2005, sought to sue ecoLegacy. The citation reads: ” that Ennis made fraudulent misrepresentations and omitted material facts in soliciting Plaintiffs to invest a total of $3,250,000 into ecoLegacy. Plaintiffs assert claims for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, violation of Texas and federal securities laws, and costs and attorneys’ fees. “

Ennis got the case dismissed because there was an arbitration agreement built into the contract.

Was the project just a piece of Irish baloney?

The question must be asked whether the whole scheme was just a piece of Irish baloney. One engineer who worked on the project called Remo says it was not and could have succeeded but was brought down by disputes between directors. All this makes the crimes of Baroness Goudie seem small beer. if this is the Lords Conduct Committee suspension template, I can only think the alleged behaviour of Lady Mona on behalf of Metpro, the PPP supplier now being sued by the government, would see her banned for five years.

The other big question is whether Baroness Goudie knew about all these shenaghins. The main court drama came after she had finished her consultancy. If one looks at her website, it looks as though eco-funerals were never at the top of her agenda. Instead she is known internationally as a women’s rights and peace campaigner holding a number of distinguished positions. On the balance of probabilities, I think not. The problems in the company were not her fault but she should have checked it out more thoroughly rather than relying on a ” trusted friend”. It was a clash of egos that bought ecoLegacy down. It was more ego than eco.

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Massive win for nuclear whistleblower Alison McDermott against Sellafield for re-arguing the tribunal decision by employment judge Lancaster

Posted on November 7, 2022 by davidhencke

The Sellafield site

First hurdle over clearing the way for a two day hearing in January to decide on whether the 13 grounds mean the ruling is overturned

An employment appeal judge has ruled that the decision by Judge Philip Lancaster dismissing whistleblower Alison McDermott’s case against Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority can be challenged now on no fewer than 13 grounds.

This extraordinary ruling on Friday in London by Employment Judge Tucker took less than 10 minutes to grant after she read the submission by Andrew Allen, KC, Alison’s counsel , means practically everything Judge Lancaster decided is open to challenge at an Employment Appeal Tribunal hearing in January. She decided she did not need to hear oral submission from Andrew Allen.

Alison McDermott; Pic credit BBC

In an earlier particularly harsh decision Judge Lancaster had decided that she wasn’t even a whistleblower, for producing, at Sellafield’s request, a damning report revealing serious issues in the HR function including allegations of bullying and harassment. Prior to this Alison had raised repeated concerns about racism, homophobic and foul language and a workforce too frightened to complain to senior management there.

Despite admitting that some of the concerns Alison raised were: ‘very offensive and concerning ” the judge ruled: “The Claimant has not, on the facts, established any alleged disclosure which is properly capable of amounting to a protected qualifying disclosure or the doing of a protected act, or that there is any causal link between what she actually said or wrote.”

It is worth providing a brief recap of what Sellafield and the NDA have done to Alison. She spoke out repeatedly about serious abuses of employees, including abject failures within the HR department, when the HR Director, Heather Roberts dismissed her overnight, allegedly for financial reasons. But when Alison started litigation, Sellafield changed its tune and Ms Roberts said she had had concerns about her performance and had only mentioned financial reasons to be kind.

Sellafield then dragged out litigation for three years before making a last-minute offer of £160,000. When they realised the carrot hadn’t worked, they decided to go on the attack and subjected her to a brutalising cross-examination in which her character and competence were repeatedly vilified until she finally broke down on the witness stand. But even then, they weren’t finished with her. As soon as Judge Lancaster ruled in their favour, they lost no time pursuing her for costs And all of this will have a hugely chilling effect on their 11,000 nuclear workforce.

Judge Lancaster claims he concentrates on anti-discrimination cases

Judge Lancaster, who says he specialises in anti-discrimination cases, went on to support Sellafield’s allegation of “underperformance” describing the report as ” questionable and insubstantial ” and without ” meaningful analysis”. Judge Lancaster completely ignored that management consultants PwC ruled that the HR function was not fit for purpose some three months later.

By then Heather Roberts, then the HR director at Sellafield, had already sacked her on the spot and immediately buried the damning report and admitted to lying about the reasons. Despite knowing that Alison had become so ill and had no income, the judge made a costs order against her and allowed Sellafield and the NDA to put in a claim for £40,000 costs against her.

Now Judge Lancaster’s own judgement will be in the firing line in January when an appeal tribunal examines 13 arguable grounds of appeal. In a skeleton argument, citing a previous judgement, Andrew Allen, KC, finds a plethora of errors in law which led to Judge Lancaster’s bizarre judgement that she was not a whistleblower. One paragraph that encompasses this – citing no fewer that eight grounds that the case could be challenged gives a flavour of this.

“It is an error of law for a tribunal to fail to give adequate reasons for its decisions so as to enable the losing party to understand why she has lost. The EAT has already decided that it is arguable that this tribunal have erred in law: in applying s27 EqA – in failing to recognise protected acts; in applying s109(2) EqA in identifying the correct relationship in dealing with agency; in failing to engage with the Claimant’s submissions in particular on adverse inferences, protected acts and agency; in failing to take a step back and look at the totality of the evidence; in failing to be Meek compliant; in failing to ensure compliance with the overriding objective to ensure that the parties are on an equal footing; in failing to ensure that the hearing was heard in public in failing to recognise that the Claimant has advanced argument on the facts and the law in relation to the agency point; and in failing to comply with the overriding objective in dealing with the case fairly and justly.”

Andrew Allen KC

Andrew Allen, KC also argued that the tribunal had failed to follow the principles of the law in pursuing costs again Alison which says should only be made in exceptional circumstances especially in the case of whistleblowing cases.

This case and Sellafield’s response is attracting wider attention. It is not just the UK press. On Friday, representatives of a prominent Norwegian environmental campaign group, Neptune Networks flew in from Oslo to attend the hearing.

Norwegian national press to follow the case

Neptune Networks has been raising serious concerns about Sellafield for the last two decades and confirmed that they will be attending the main hearing on 17 and 18 January 2020 and they will be accompanied by members of the national Norwegian press.

Finally a little note about Judge Lancaster. He is also the chair of directors of a Christian charity, Spacious Spaces, based in Leeds, which offers treatment programmes for alcoholics and drug takers. Here he is known simply as ” Phil”. This is the note about him on their site.

“Phil Lancaster practised as a barrister, specialising in criminal cases. He is now an Employment Judge dealing primarily with the anti-discrimination laws. He is a member of St George’s Church, where he has been a church warden and served on the parochial church council. He is married with fairly recently grown-up children and a large collection of Bob Dylan cds.”

I find it a little perplexing given his Christian background and commitment to treating drug addicts and alcoholics that he is not concerned about what Alison McDermott exposed about the pressures on staff inside Sellafield who are working in the most hazardous nuclear site in Europe. I also find it deeply disturbing that he made snide and pejorative comments about Alison both during the ET hearing and in the merits and cost judgment.

An example of this is the nasty insinuations he made about Alison when he accused her in the costs judgment of bringing a claim ‘to advance her career across the nuclear sector’ even though she had turned down a £160,000 to bring her claim to court. He also seems oblivious of the huge strain and damage whistleblowers face to their careers when they blow the whistle. If his judgement is found to be so badly wrong by the Employment Appeal Tribunal, there must be some serious questions about justice in the employment tribunal system.

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