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Mel Stride roasted over his ” no undue delay” posture on compensating the 3.5 million 50swomen who had waited a decade to get justice

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Mel Stride

Not one MP in Parliament came to the rescue of Mel Stride, the work and pension secretary, when he made his initial statement on the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report which concluded that there was maladministration over the delay in communicating the six year delay to women in the 1950s and either Parliament or the DWP should compensate them.

Essentially it was a holding statement with the minister emphasising that it was a complex 100 page report which he had to consider very carefully.

“The ombudsman has noted in his report the challenges and the complexities of this issue. In laying the report before Parliament, the ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of the House and we will provide a further update to the House once we have considered the report’s findings.”

He also tried to drag in the judicial review, then pursued by Back to 60, for the reason for the delay in the Ombudsman’s report, citing that the two courts the High Court and the Court of Appeal had presented as fact that the DWP had not acted unlawfully ( no one said they had) over maladministration. The trouble is he got it wrong, the hearings which I attended, were about discrimination in the past not maladministration. As Marcia Will Stewart, the lawyer from Bimberg Peirce, said in 2019 “Our judicial review had nothing to do with maladministration investigation, whatever others may say”. And as she was bringing the case I prefer her analysis to Mel Stride’s.

Liz Kendall

Indeed Mr Stride’s only other friend in Parliament was Liz Kendall, Labour’s Opposition spokesman, who said:

“This is a serious report that requires serious consideration. The ombudsman has rightly said it is for the Government to respond but that Parliament should also consider its findings.

“Members on this side of the House will look carefully at the report too and continue to listen respectfully to those involved, as we have done from the start.” ( in other words we don’t want to lose your vote in case you think we are siding with Tories).

Tories were not Stride’s best friends

But it was the Tories who, while polite, were not his best friends. None of them defended the government’s delay and all pressed for a decision. It started with Caroline Noakes, who chairs the Women and Equalities select committee, who said:

““I recognise this is an interim update but I would gently press (Mr Stride) that Waspi women have been waiting five years for the ombudsman, they won’t want to wait for a select committee inquiry into this report in order to see action from the Government.”

Soon it became clear that many other Tories, mindful of holding on to their seats, did not want unnecessary delays. Tory MPs representing Stroud, Scunthorpe, North Norfolk, Eastbourne, Waveney, Weston super Mare, Amber Valley and the Isle of Wight were among many who made it abundantly clear they would not brook this being pushed into the long grass.

Bob Seely

Bob Seely, the MP for the Isle of Wight, while praising the government for keeping the triple lock, had every reason to be concerned – he has the largest number of 50swomen in his present constituency and foul wind combined with their lack of support ( even if the Island now gets two seats) could sweep him away.

But the government faced its greatest attack from the Scottish National Party who members slammed ministers. Patricia Gibson, their official spokesman and MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, hit out at ” timid Labour” and ministers.

“We in the SNP stand shoulder to shoulder with these women, who have been abandoned and betrayed by the UK Government and the future Labour Government. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what it will take to compensate these women? Do we need another TV drama to embarrass and shame the Government into doing the right thing? “

Other SNP MPs cited deaths of the women in their constituencies and the anger among the women. Ian Blackford, the former Westminster SNP leader said: “Can we imagine what would happen in this place if it was announced that private sector pensions were being put back by six years? Rightly, there would be outrage, and there should be outrage about what happened to the WASPI women.”

Joanna Cherry picked up on Mel Stride and Labour muddying the waters over raising the judicial review

“The WASPI campaign has asked me to emphasise its annoyance about how often Government Ministers, when talking about these issues, attempt to muddy the waters by referring back to the unsuccessful litigation to reverse the increase to the state pension age, or to claim direct discrimination. That was not litigation by the official WASPI campaign, and I am sure that its members were annoyed to hear a senior Labour Front Bencher doing the same thing on the radio last night.”

Labour backbenchers took a much stronger line than their front bench demanding a timetable for the implementation of compensation starting with Marsha de Cordova, representing Battersea.

“The Secretary of State has said that he wants to continue to look in detail at the findings of the report, but surely he should be able to make an unambiguous commitment to compensation for these women.”

Imran Hussain, representing Bradford East said: “Will he at least accept that every time a Minister stands up and says “undue delay” or “due process” they really mean that they have no intention of addressing the problem, and are saving face and kicking the can down the road?

Other criticism came from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, told him:” we have no confidence in the Department for Work and Pensions to resolve its basic failure of decades ago..”

It will not have been a pleasant experience for Mel Stride who was probably glad Parliament closed for the day after this statement. He would be extremely stupid not to take note but MPs will have to keep up the pressure to get any compensation out of this government. Only the fear of being swept out of power will make them do anything, but whether it be enough money will be another matter.

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50s women are back to Square One after the Parliamentary Ombudsman “cops out” of awarding them a penny

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Rob Behrens departing Parliamentary Commissioner

Today’s report from Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, is one of the most underwhelming publications ever to come from a public figure asked to redress a major injustice.

After toiling over his report for some seven years all he can produce is a mouse of a publication which leaves some 3.5 million women born in the 1950s having to fight their corner all over again to get compensation for waiting six more years to get their pension.

We should have known it was likely to be lacklustre after his first preliminary report conceded only “partial maladministration ” for the way the Department for Work and Pensions failed to communicate with the women about the long wait they would have to get their pensions. This immediately lowered the amount of compensation he might award at the end – ruling out the highest level. And WASPI under Angela Madden, were totally stupid not to challenge this at the time, particularly as evidence emerged during the judicial review brought by the ” Back to 60 ” campaign that the DWP’s own civil servants had urged the then secretary of state, Peter now Lord Lilley, to run a campaign to tell the women as long ago as 1997. They knew the women hadn’t realised the implications.

Spurious objections from the DWP

Now today’s report completely ducks the issue, make no recommendation for an award and caves into spurious objections from the DWP that it is either too costly to find the people affected or too costly to pay out. Given the DWP know the details of every pensioner bank account as they have to pay them every month, this is plain ridiculous. At least he spared them the other claim from the DWP that some of the 50s women were fraudsters if they put in a claim. No doubt this civil servant who wrote this relished prosecuting and jailing these elderly women like the managers who led the Post Office pursued the sub postmasters.

There is some guidance in his report which appears to suggest he might have thought giving them a range of compensation from £1000 each to £2900 but there is no detailed mechanism of how this could be done.

And as for asking Parliament to decide, the big question is how? For start there is no agreement on the level of compensation. Is it the £1000 – £2900 hinted by the Ombudsman ? Is it the £10,000 promised by Angela Madden and the All Party Parliamentary Group on this issue? Should it be the £58 billion that the former Labour chancellor, John McDonnell, promised during Labour’s last election campaign?Or should it be full restitution of all the money promised by CEDAWinLAW, which could end up with some getting over £40,000. There is plenty of space for everyone to disagree and delay.

What is the mechanism that will force the DWP to give into demands from Parliament? The answer is that there is none. Angela Madden today was spectacularly naive in thinking that is is wonderful that Parliament will decide.

Parliament controlled by Government whips

For a start the Parliamentary agenda is almost totally controlled by Government whips. And do people really think the government, which opposes paying anything, is going to make Government time available to debate something they don’t want to hear? Also Labour may be reluctant to use one of its Opposition days to debate the issue because it would force them to declare their hand and then be subject to barrage of attacks from the Tories claiming everybody’s taxes were to go up to pay these women? Only the Scottish National Party could risk calling a debate as the bill falls on Westminster not Holyrood.

A backbencher could put up a motion but I gather this would not be binding on the DWP who would safely ignore it.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman, who retires this week, could have given a clear uncompromising lead on what could have been done but flunked it. Frankly if I read the Jerusalem Post correctly he has give more uncompromising support to the Israeli government’s bombing of Gaza than he has defending the rights of cheated pensioners in this country.

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William Wragg acts as Parliamentary Ombudsman Office faces life without a boss

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William Wragg

William Wragg, the Tory chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, has belatedly intervened in the growing crisis over the failure of the Prime Minister to appoint a new Parliamentary Ombudsman to replace Rob Behrens who quits on March 31.

In a letter published on the committee’s website Mr Wragg asks Sir Alex Allan, the senior non executive director on the Parliamentary and Heath Services Ombudsman board, what measures will be taken to keep the office going and what is going to happen to people who, via their MP, want to lodge a complaint to the Ombudsman. He also raises whether reports can be published and complaints investigated. Particularly at risk is the long awaited report on the partial maladministration for 50swomen who faced a six year delay getting their pension.

The letter discloses that recruitment for a new Ombudsman began last October and a panel chose the winning candidate at the beginning of January. Since then the Cabinet Office and Rishi Sunak, who has to approve the appointment, have not responded. The silence from Whitehall and Downing Street means no motion can be put to Parliament appointing a new Ombudsman, who then appears before the PACAC for a pre appointment hearing. PACAC has only a couple of weeks to set up the hearing.

Sir Alex Allan

The publication of the letter by the committee is in fact a response to a letter written to Mr Wragg from Sir Alex warning of dire consequences for the corporate body if no one was appointed and suggesting that Rebecca Hilsenrath, the current chief executive is appointed as an Interim Ombudsman. The letter was briefly on the committee’s website but withdrawn the moment I published a blog about it.

Part of it read:


I am aware that, due to the preferred candidate’s notice period, there will be a need to appoint an
interim Ombudsman and that the view remains that this should be Rebecca Hilsenrath, Chief
Executive Officer at PHSO. We have yet to receive confirmation of this, despite the urgency, which
is making it difficult for the organisation to properly plan for leadership change.
As a corporation sole, the organisation cannot operate without an Ombudsman in post. Any delay to
the appointment puts the organisation at considerable risk. In particular because key casework
decisions could not be taken it puts at risk all of the work to reduce the queue and improve service
to complainants. Clarity of the timeline for both the permanent and interim Ombudsman appointments is therefore pressing,

However the antiquated legislation suggests that the PHSO board cannot appoint its own acting ombudsman. It has to be appointed from outside the board.

The legislation specifically refers to an “Acting Ombudsman” and, as such, cannot be appointed by the PHSO Board of Directors.

Section 3A of the 1967 Act deals with the appointment of an Acting Commissioner who serves at the pleasure of His Majesty.

The Acting Commissioner can only serve for a maximum of 12 months or until a new Commissioner is appointed (whichever is sooner).

The full text of William Wragg’s letter is here.

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Why the next government must tackle Whitehall reform to get the best bang for its buck

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Francis Maude pic credit: Gov.uk

Last week I attended a meeting of the industry forum, a progressive think tank that discusses crucial business and economic issues often addressed by Labour politicians and MPs under Chatham House rules. This one was different for two reasons. It was “on the record” and it was addressed by a former Tory minister, Francis Maude, one of the founders of Policy Exchange, a Conservative think tank and traditionally to the right of the party.

But before anyone on the left start to think this is another example of Sir Keir Starmer’s lurch to the right, this was an unusual and useful meeting of minds.

Lord Maude has recently conducted a thorough and detailed independent review of the governance and accountability of the civil service for the government – not the most sexiest of subjects. But its important findings have been spurned by the present Tory government.

To my mind there is a lot to be learned from this review for both Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. It is quite clear from the latest interviews with Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, that she believes that if Labour win the next election it is going very difficult for them to spend more cash on the day to day running of public services. Labour needs to make sure it doesn’t waste a penny of taxpayer’s money and Lord Maude’s proposed reforms could help them achieve this.

What Lord Maude frankly exposes is that Whitehall is directionless. Yes there are theoretical controls – the PM is technically responsible for running the civil service. But there is no system of delegating this power to either civil servants or ministers.

Centre of Whitehall is unwieldly

The result in his words: ” The centre is now unwieldy, with confusion about where responsibilities lie and a lack of clear lines of accountability. Other jurisdictions with similar systems provide signposts to improved arrangements.”

Why this is important is that it means there is a lack of overall control on how large areas of government spending are made and how effective the policies implemented by governments are in practice. One only has to read my articles in Byline Times to see legions of exposures by the National Audit Office of waste, inefficiency and bad decision making which could have saved the taxpayer billions.

Lord Maude’s proposals include merging the Cabinet and the Prime Minster’s office into one powerful body – so a future PM will have much greater control over the direction of the government – and a new Office of Budget and Management to bring together cross Whitehall projects which tend to fall into a void because of Whitehall’s silo mentality.

The head of the civil service should also be a full time job so he or she can concentrate on bringing about all these reforms and so should the First Civil Service Commissioner who should be in charge of a wider programme and be able to hold the head of the civil service to account and make an annual report to Parliament.

Every minister should get a letter telling him or her clearly what their powers are and what they should expect from civil servants.

Not a lot of this is radical stuff. Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand already have similar systems because they are more modern democracies than the UK.

Labour are about to start talking to the civil service under the usual courtesy given to opposition parties before a general election. This would be an ideal situation to raise this. I would also suggest that the Shadow Cabinet should have a session with Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office, to draw on the independent body’s wealth of experience of what went wrong in the past and how they could avoid such pitfalls in the future. Voters will depend on Labour getting it right.

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MPs call again for reform of the antiquated Parliamentary Ombudsman – but ignore the plight of 50swomen

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William Wragg MP: official Portrait

Also ” Ombudsman friend “of Rob Behrens facing a corruption hearing in Australia

MPs today publish their official annual scrutiny of the work of the Parliamentary Ombudsman but what it doesn’t say is more important than what it says.

The committee call again – this time for a manifesto commitment from all political parties – to reform the 57 year old Ombudsman legislation – to give the Ombudsman and Health Service Commissioner more clout and powers to ensure his or her recommendations are implemented This follows the blank refusal of this government to take any action to do so. Michael Gove when he was in the Cabinet Office ruled out even a draft bill.

In a desperate plea the chairman, Tory William Wragg, who is also quitting at the election, says:

“As we have done annually for many years now to no avail, we are once again calling on the Government to bring forward what is now very long-overdue legislative reform of the PHSO, so that it can provide the level of service the public requires from it.

“Given the necessity of PHSO reform, we urge all political parties to include a commitment to reforming the legislation relating to the PHSO in their election manifestos ahead of the next General Election.”

Whether the Tories will commit to this must be unlikely since it suits the present government, particularly the Department for Work and Pensions, and to some extent the NHS, to have a weak Ombudsman who can be safely ignored if they don’t like what he says.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office has welcomed the committee’s statement:

“We are pleased to see the Committee’s support for reform of our outdated legislative framework and their call for Government to reconsider its position and consult with stakeholders ahead of the General Election. We agree with their sentiment that reform has been ‘neglected’, is ‘long overdue’, and that ‘further delay is no longer tenable’. 

The rest of the report seems a mixture of praise and criticism over the Ombudsman’s performance. He is praised for dealing with a backlog of complaints that followed the Covid 19 pandemic but criticised for the way he didn’t handle well complaints affecting the elderly and the disabled.

Rob Behrens, retiring Parliamentary Ombudsman

But there were two huge elephants in the room missing in the report. Retiring Ombudsman Robert Behrens when he faced MPs had to spend a good part of the session facing criticism from MPs of the huge and unprecedented delay in publishing his report on the plight of 50swomen – some of them WASPI supporters – and recommending compensation for maladminstration in the six year delay in getting their state pension. Indeed his report is taking longer than the actual delay in getting their pensions.

Yet from today’s report you would think this never happened. There is not one word in the report acknowledging this. All there is a footnote referring to the WASPI evidence while the evidence from CEDAWinLAW does not even merit that.

Yet any reader of this blog knows the present draft recommends NO compensation for the women leaving it up to MPs in Parliament to debate whether women should get a penny.

This is more outrageous given that over 500 people know what it says and practically every sitting MP knows the outcome but most are happy to participate in a conspiracy of silence hoping it will go away. WASPI is playing the same game and one is beginning to wonder whether they want to get any money at all.

The other missing information is who is going to be new Ombudsman. The committee inadvertently published the letter sent to the Cabinet Office from Sir Alex Allen, once adviser to David Cameron and Boris Johnson until he resigned, and now a member of the Parliamentary Ombudsman Board – see my blog here– asking for a speedy decision from Rishi Sunak to replace Rob Behrens. Now it is nearly a month since I wrote about this and nothing has happened. The Cabinet Office appears not to have replied.

Yet they have only until March 27 – when Parliament goes into Easter recess – to fix up a meeting to approve the appointment of a successor. Even if the board appoints an acting ombudsman under the 1967 legislation it would still need Parliamentary approval by the committee, I am told.

Rob Behrens also had strong links with the various international organisations – a couple of which have been hit by scandals.

A war crime and a corruption scandal

Josef Ziegele, the European Ombudsman Institute ‘s general secretary, was behind the alleged deportation of two Ukrainian refugee children from Austria to Russia which could be a war crime according to the Kyiv Independent which led to other Ombudsmen, including Rob Behrens resigning from it last April.

The president of the International Ombudsman Institute, Chris Field, who is the Western Australia state Parliamentary ombudsman, is apparently a good friend of Rob Behrens. But at the moment Field is at the centre of corruption hearings in Western Australia over his huge annual travel expenses of $266,000 Australian dollars (£136,840) and for subsidising his organisation through money allocated from Australian taxpayers.

At a visit to Ukraine in 2022 Mr Field heaped praise on Mr Behrens saying “I am deeply grateful to my good friend and colleague Rob Behrens CBE, IOI Vice President Europe, who joined me on this visit. He is a person of utter integrity, searching intellect and profoundly good values. He came to Ukraine. He lives his values” .

He also put a submission to the PACAC saying: ” He is counted as a wise mentor and friend by me and so many of his colleagues around the world. Ombudsman Behrens has not just transformed the office of the PHSO into one of the world’s leading Ombudsman offices, he has made a contribution to the IOI and the institution of the Ombudsman globally of inestimable value. It is of some note that I was accompanied by only one Ombudsman on my visit to Ukraine in December in 2022, namely Ombudsman Behrens. He distinguished his office and his country during this visit.”

The annual report of his Ombudsman’s report for West Australia revealed Field had visited Taiwan, China, Ukraine, Britain, the US, Slovenia, Thailand, Austria, Morocco, France, Russia, Poland and Hungary.  Just prior to his visit to Ukraine, the IOI president met with the Australian Ambassador to Poland Lloyd Brodrick, and the Australian Ambassador to Ukraine Bruce Edwards in Poland. 

Chris Field, Western Australia Ombudsman

During the first tranche of the corruption hearings against him ( they resume mid March) it was revealed that he decided to end rules disclosing gifts he had received on foreign trips by raising the disclosure limit from around £25 to £125. It was revealed that he planned to give the OECD in Paris from Australian taxpayers funds , over $213,000 (about £107,000) for a project concerning, ‘the role of Ombudsman institutions in building a culture of open government for stronger and more resilient communities.’ The first invoice from OECD of half the cash was blocked by the Ombudsman’s chief finance officer.

He also ordered his office to pay for a private limousine to take him from the Paris Hilton to the OECD headquarters because he said taxis were difficult to find in Paris.

It was said he was only in the office for two days out of ten because of all these world trips and he designated other people to take operational decisions.

Behrens stands with Israel

MPs in today’s report praise the Ombudsman for seeking co-operation with international organisations. It also discloses that the Parliamentary Ombudsman is working closely to co-operate with Israel’s Ombudsman.

So closely that Matanyahu Englman, Israel’s Ombudsman requested both Chris Field and Rob Behrens to issue a statement by the International Ombudsman Institute giving unqualified support to Israel to fight HAMAS.

Chris Field obliged saying: “There can be no false moral equivalences in the lawful and correct response of Israel to those who came to slaughter the Jewish people,” in a letter to Israel’s State Comptroller and Ombudsman Matanyahu Englman. “No international body should be allowed to falter in their resolve to eradicate a body that actually pays their members to kill Jews. There can be no peace in the Middle East while terrorism and undemocratic representation of the peoples of Gaza seek to eliminate the Jewish people.”

See the Jerusalem Post article here for the full story.

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Whistleblower Dr Chris Day wins right to appeal in his ten year patient safety battle against Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust

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Dr Chris Day

Whistleblower Dr Chris Day won the right to appeal today when a a Deputy High Court Judge Andrew Burns of the Employment Appeal Tribunal granted permission to appeal the November 2022 decision of the London South Employment Tribunal on six out of ten grounds at a hearing in London.

My blog on this judgement is here: Tribunal of the Absurd: My Verdict on the Dr Chris Day whistleblower case | Westminster Confidential (davidhencke.com)

The saga which has now being going on for almost ten years began when Dr Day  raised patient safety issues in intensive care unit at Woolwich Hospital in London. The Judge said today this was of the “utmost seriousness” and were linked to two avoidable deaths but their status as reasonable beliefs were contested by the NHS for 4 years using public money.

Deputy High Court judge Andrew Burns

In a series of twists and turns at various tribunals investigating his claims Dr Day has been vilified by the trust not only in court but in a press release sent out by the trust and correspondence with four neighbouring trust chief executives and the head of NHS England, Dr Amanda Pritchard and local MPs.

This specific hearing followed a judgement in favour of the trust by employment judge Anne Martin at a hearing which revealed that David Cocke, a director of communications at the trust, who was due to be a witness but never turned up, destroyed 90,000 emails overnight during the hearing. A huge amount of evidence and correspondence that should have been released to Dr Day was suddenly discovered. The new evidence showed that the trust’s chief executive, Ben Travis, had misled the tribunal when he said that a board meeting which discussed Dr Day’s case did not exist and that he had not informed any other chief executive about the case other than the documents that were eventually disclosed to the court..

The hearing went on for an extra week because of all these disclosures and the British Medical Association, who are representing Dr Day, asked for their costs to be repaid yesterday because of the additional expense at the hearing. The judge agreed that a separate appeal to recover the  BMA costs should also be granted permission to be heard.

Instead of a decision to allow an appeal this hearing was held today to decide whether there was an ” arguable case ” for an appeal.

Dr Chris Day won the right to appeal that some of the findings of the judgement were perverse, that the judgement failed to draw any inferences from the destruction of 90,000 emails and the failure to provide documents that would have helped Dr Day’s case. This in particular followed the disclosure in documents that under oath the chief executive, Ben Travis gave an untrue account about a board meeting and had hidden he had contacted other trust chief executives about Dr Day.

The judge seemed exercised that the trust despite the Care Quality Commission expressing concern about a press release which attacked Dr Day decided to do nothing about it and the judgement appeared to ignore this.

Andrew Allen KC

The judge also allowed the right of appeal for Dr Day about the way he had been treated as an employee and how events had unfolded at the trust.

What was not allowed was the right of Andrew Allen, the BMA’s funded lawyer, to cross examine the trust’s lawyer, Ben Cooper, about remarks he had made about Dr Day during the hearing. some of which he was forced to concede were not accurate. Mr Cooper was rescued By Judge Anne Martin from having to respond to Dr Day’s supplementary statement on this point and was further rescued by the EAT today. Coincidently today Mr Cooper was representing the retail giant Asda in a case next door to today’s hearing.

My Statement on Ben Cooper KC – DrChrisDay

 The Judge also blocked a ground of appeal relating to factual findings being made on whether MPs and the Press has been misled on Dr Day’s protected disclosures. Also blocked was Dr Day’s and his legal team’s clear request for a formal finding on whether deliberate concealment had occurred as part of Dr Day’s protected disclosures. It was made clear to the Judge these points were what the case was about.

Ben Cooper QC

Despite this the decision of a senior judge does call into question the judgement made by Anne Martin who it is now arguable made some poor calls -particularly avoiding the issue of the destruction of emails and withholding documents that should have been disclosed to Dr Day’s lawyers.

The judge also paid Dr Day a compliment saying by raising the dangers for patient safety caused by staff shortages in 2014 he was ” way ahead of his time.” This might suggest that judiciary is becoming increasingly aware about the state of the NHS and its effect on patient safety. Perhaps judges are seeing too many scandals reported in NHS trusts.

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How a past Wellingborough by election almost saw the nemesis of my career in journalism

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Wellingborough By Election. John Mann of the Labour Party, canvassing outside the John White factory. ;November 1969 Pic credit: Alamy and Trinity Mirror

Tomorrow’s Wellingborough by-election brings back memories of an earlier by-election there 55 years ago which nearly ended my career.

The election was triggered by the death of the sitting Labour MP. Harry Howarth and was won by the Tory candidate Peter Fry a right wing populist who blamed Labour for the permissive society of the 1960s and later voted against joining the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union. He died in 2015. His losing Labour opponent was John Mann, a local man, who with his wife Jean, a county councillor, was a stalwart of the local Labour Party. He is alive and we still exchange Christmas cards.

I was a young cub reporter, fresh from Warwick University, one of the first graduates to join the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, apprenticed at £16 and sixpence a week. I had that summer married my wife, Margaret. Aged just 22, I was young and enthusiastic and learnt my trade covering parish councils, magistrates courts and local societies.

Imagine my excitement when a by-election was declared in the autumn of 1969 in Wellingborough, a sleepy Northamptonshire market town, extended only by a Greater London Council estate which meant the town had a mixture of Northamptonshire and Cockney accents. I would be able to rub shoulders with the ” big boys ” – then they were mostly male – from the nationals coming to cover it. And indeed I did, meeting, I remember, Laurence Marks from the Observer and numerous journalists from the Mail , Express and the Daily Mirror.

Now Peter Fry being on the right of the party invited Enoch Powell to speak at a hustings meeting. I managed to get there – not to report- and bring my wife, than a teacher at a local infants school.

Powell did not repeat his infamous ” rivers of blood speech” on immigration made the year before but instead gave a rather dry speech on economics. But the audience had been infiltrated by local Young Socialists. They started heckling him and then my wife joined in. I decided as I was a reporter I should remain neutral and didn’t.

After the meeting we had some drinks with some of the national journalists who thought my wife had been brave and I didn’t think much more about it.

” You failed to control your wife”

The next day I discovered that the local Tory big wigs and Mr Fry had been in touch with the editor, Ron Howe, to get me the sack. My crime was ” I had failed to control my wife” at the meeting. I had not thought about that as I always regard my wife as an independent person and not supposed to be controlled by me. But it says a lot about attitudes in Wellingborough in the late 1960s.

But the editor decided not to sack me. Instead I was banned from the Conservative Club in the town for at least a year ( I didn’t mind that) and was not allowed to write about Conservatives. If I had been sacked my journalist career would have just been 15 months long instead of the 56 years today. I had escaped nemesis by a hair’s breath.

Wellingborough inner ring road scandal

I did redeem myself two years later. Wellingborough Urban District Council called a secret meeting of the whole council to discuss plans for six options for a new inner city ring road – these were the fashion in the early 1970s. One option involved demolishing 300 houses to make way for the road. A local Labour councillor decided this was too much and leaked all the proposals to me. It made the splash, the project was eventually buried and I won my first journalist award as reporter of the year on the East Midlands Allied Press group. I did get a summons to see to town clerk who was furious with me saying ” Who the hell do you think you are, you’re not working for the Guardian”. When I did six years later I was tempted to ring him up. My local editor backed me and in turn threatened the town clerk with national publicity for the cover up.

I then left the Northants ET as a qualified journalist and I got a job on the Western Mail in Cardiff. I suspected the Tory Establishment in Wellingborough were glad to see the back of me.

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Exclusive:Rishi Sunak delays appointment of new Parliamentary Ombudsman and throws the organisation into crisis

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Sir Alex Allan, board member of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Pic credit: BBC

Email from Sir Alex Allan revealing problem removed from Parliamentary website after I made a press inquiry

Parliament and the Health Service will not have a new permanent Ombudsman from April because the Prime Minister has delayed approving a new replacement who anyway cannot start work at the office because he or she has to give notice to leave their present job.

Details of the crisis at the office are revealed in an email sent on January 29 from Sir Alex Allan, a senior non executive member of the board of the Ombudsman’s office, to William Wragg, Tory chair of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC).

Sir Alex is a former high flying civil servant who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee, and was the Prime Minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards until 2020 when he resigned after Boris Johnson refused to accept his report on Priti Patel, the former home secretary, concluding that her behaviour was bullying.

The email pleads with William Wragg to contact Downing Street to resolve the problem as a matter of urgency.

His email warns:

“As a corporation sole, the organisation cannot operate without an Ombudsman in post. Any delay to the appointment puts the organisation at considerable risk. In particular because key casework decisions could not be taken it puts at risk all of the work to reduce the queue and improve service to complainants. Clarity of the timeline for both the permanent and interim Ombudsman
appointments is therefore pressing.”

A pre-appointment hearing - part of the normal appointment process - had been pencilled in by PACAC to quiz the new Ombudsman but that has been pit back and there is no date for a future hearing. The page announcing the future hearing on the website is now blank.

He goes on: “”I am pleased that the Panel, led by Philippa Helme, has identified a preferred candidate but I am concerned about the apparent delays since then. We have yet to receive confirmation that the preferred candidate has been agreed by the Prime Minister. “

Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive at the PHSO

Sir Alex says the board’s preferred solution is to appoint an interim Ombudsman and suggests Rebecca Hilsenrath, the current chief executive who moved there from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, would be the ideal candidate.

But Whitehall has not even approved this. He writes: “We have yet to receive confirmation of this, despite the urgency, which is making it difficult for the organisation to properly plan for leadership change.”

The crisis facing the Ombudsman’s Office raises a whole of questions which I tried to put to them.

This includes questions like whether Rebecca Hilsenrath, if appointed as an interim, will be able to announce case decisions affecting complaints about hospitals and the NHS, or will they have to wait until they have a permanent appointment?

From Sir Alex’s letter it is also clear if neither people are approved by Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, the office would cease to function altogether until this was sorted out.

The impasse could also affect the timing of the publication of the final report by the outgoing Ombudsman, Rob Behrens, on maladministration in 50s women’s delayed pensions. WASPI have been waiting years for its publication and have seen the draft report which has already been leaked on this website. See the blog here.

A PHSO spokesperson said:

“The process to appoint a new Ombudsman is ongoing. We are in discussions about interim arrangements should they be needed. Our important service for the public continues.”

A spokesperson for PACAC said the committee could not comment but the original pre appointment hearing had been scheduled for last month but because they had not had confirmation from the Cabinet Office that the government had approved the appointment no date was fixed. The email should not have published on their website which is why it was taken down. This suggests that Rishi Sunak has been delaying a decision to approve the appointment for weeks.

For those interested the text of the email is published below:

From the Senior Non-Executive, Sir Alex Allan KCB
Sent by Email Only: pacac@parliament.uk
29 January 2024
Dear Mr Wragg,
I am writing to convey my concerns about the slippage in the timetable to appoint a new
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) and to ask for your support, as Chair of the
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, in raising these concerns with No 10.
I am pleased that the Panel, led by Philippa Helme, has identified a preferred candidate but I am
concerned about the apparent delays since then. We have yet to receive confirmation that the
preferred candidate has been agreed by the Prime Minister. That meant that the planned preappointment scrutiny hearing had to be cancelled and has not been refixed.
I am aware that, due to the preferred candidate’s notice period, there will be a need to appoint an
interim Ombudsman and that the view remains that this should be Rebecca Hilsenrath, Chief
Executive Officer at PHSO. We have yet to receive confirmation of this, despite the urgency, which
is making it difficult for the organisation to properly plan for leadership change.
As a corporation sole, the organisation cannot operate without an Ombudsman in post. Any delay to
the appointment puts the organisation at considerable risk. In particular because key casework
decisions could not be taken it puts at risk all of the work to reduce the queue and improve service
to complainants. Clarity of the timeline for both the permanent and interim Ombudsman appointments is therefore pressing,

I have written to Baroness Neville-Rolfe to convey these concerns and I would be grateful if you
would consider raising them with the Prime Minister’s office.
Yours sincerely,
Sir Alex Allan
Senior Non-Executive Director

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How the toxic management of a health trust and law firm Capsticks got rid of a senior nurse whistleblower

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Thurdy Campbell

A former senior nurse at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich has come forward with a fresh tale of the toxic management at the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and their treatment of whistleblowers in the wake of the tribunal verdict involving staff nurse Francisca Holmes. Francisca lost her case against the trust management over her treatment but the judge ruled she had genuine whistleblowing concerns when she was told of a patient found dead in Ward 22.

This is the same health trust still involved in a ten year battle with Dr Chris Day,  a junior doctor, who in 2014 brought a still on going case on two ” avoidable deaths” in their intensive care unit. It is the same trust where a senior communications director deliberately destroyed 90,000 emails that could have been used in Dr Day’s defence during a tribunal hearing and escaped censure from the presiding judge.

Thurdy Campbell, a black senior nurse of Jamaican nationality, had worked for 22 years at the hospital as a senior sister in their accident and emergency department and manager of combined wards 22 and 23. She was dismissed on 17 May 2022.

Her grievance letter claims: “I was subjected to the following: work place mobbing, severe episodes of
harassment and discriminative treatments, miscarriage of justice , coercive control, defamation of character, endangered working environment , abuse of power of position for personal gain and recrimination after making a series of protected acts and qualifying disclosures to NMC [Nursing and Midwifery Council]25 May 2021.

Senior party members from the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Kelly Lewis-Towler, director of operations for acute and emergency medicine; Meera Nair ,director of people and board member, Victoria Tyler ,head of employee relations; HR Team and Investigation Managers colluded in wrongdoing by protecting the perpetrators and subjected me to series of detriments.”

Some of the managers she accuses appear in the same case as Francisca Holmes such as line manager Rodney Katandika and Ann Marie Coiley, the director of nursing.

Rodney Katandika

Matters came to a head when she was manager of the new combined Ward 22 and 23 – the ward where Francisca Holmes was told that an elderly patient was found dead. She raised the issue of patient safety but had no serious response. Six months after this incident Thurdy sent a further email saying “Clinical concerns relating to issues affecting patient’s safety, staffing, staff well-being and the working environment of Ward 22” escalating this to senior line management. Straight after this the trust launched a disciplinary hearing against her leading eventually to her dismissal the following May.

Kelly LewisTowler director of operations for acute and emergency medicine

She was certainly a thorn in the side of senior management. An internal email from Kelly Lewis-Towler to other senior managers, sent on 28 July 2021 accuses her of intimidation and claims senior staff were ill with workplace stress, declining to return from holidays, and claiming she cannot adequately support them and is facing ” a mass exit of staff”. All because she raised patient safety issues. She turns this on its head by saying patient safety is at risk because of the behaviour of Thurdy.

It is no wonder that during Francisca Holmes’ tribunal the trust did not produce her as a witness, even though she was well placed to comment on the situation since she was ward manager where the patient death happened because it would have revealed her warning of patient safety and provided evidence to the judge of bullying of Francisca by other senior staff.

Capsticks role in the trust

Thurdy’s grievance letter also exposes another worrying feature. Not only does Capsticks have a role as the trust’s lawyer to refute Thurdy’s claims at the employment tribunal but they have a major investigating role inside the trust for handling claims and disputes. So the firm has advance notice of any trouble coming managment’s way from staff and can intervene to help refute it and be in poll position should the person takes the trust to a tribunal. The firm are basically judge and jury in whistleblowing cases at Greenwich and Lewisham NHS trust.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich

Worse than that the grievance letter reveals that Capsticks attempted to force Thurdy to sign a non disclosure agreement – not as part of a normal procedure to get a settlement – but while the firm were involved in the internal investigation. Fortunately she resisted or otherwise you would be banned from reading about this case.

Thurdy lost the first round of employment tribunal cases and is awaiting the result of an appeal.

Her dismissal also nearly led to her being evicted from her home. She now has got a new job at less pay than in the NHS but in a much better enviornment.

My final point is that given the current state of the NHS it can ill afford to lose experienced nurses and doctors by maligning them in whistleblowing cases – like Thurdy and Francisca – and Martyn Pitman, the popular and competent obstetrician in Hampshire and Dr David Drew at Morecambe Bay. That’s why the treatment of whistleblowers needs urgent reform.

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I

Why does the DWP want the personal documents of the six complainants over 50swomen pensions when it has decided to refuse to pay them?

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Rather late in the day the Department for Work and Pensions has requested personal documents from the six ” test case” complainants representing 3.5 million 50s born pensioners seeking compensation for maladministration.

This is the latest twist in the long running saga of the 50swomen fight for compensation which has taken seven years without a penny being paid out.

Having been contacted by some of the six women who are puzzled why the DWP should want such information and are not getting any adequate explanation from the DWP or the Ombudsman’s office. The request has come from the Parliamentary Ombudsman who is seeking their permission to hand over files that contain the personal information. The six are not supposed to confer with each other.

Rob Behrens Parliamentary Ombudsman

They have good reason to be puzzled. For the confidential submission to the Ombudsman from the DWP says the ministry has already decided to give them nothing. A section of their long submission addresses the problem that if it decided they should have some money why they don’t qualify for any financial redress. It goes through each case and tries to demolish the grounds under the partial maladministration found by the Ombudsman for the women to get anything. The documents it is seeking only apply to the partial maladministration found by the Ombudsman covering some 28 months Rob Behrens decided the ministry should have informed the women. So the Ombudsman will not pass to the DWP the full documentation from those who wanted the maladministration to cover the whole period after the 1995 Pensions Act was passed.

The confidential submission from the DWP does not accept that any of the six complainants are entitled to compensation. It rejects blanket payments to all saying ” we struggle to see how a uniform approach to the level of compensation has any validity when the individual situation of the complainants are all very different.”

It goes on to demolish claims of ill health, lack of money and financial loss are anything to do with the time the complainant received notice of the delay in their pension, blaming other factors for their distress.

It blames three of the complainants for not taking enough action to sort out their finances. It accuses two of them who said they would have kept working if they had known about the delay earlier, of failing to find jobs once they knew.

“It is very difficult to conclude that these complainants missed an opportunity to improve their financial situation because they did not take the action they claim they would have taken.”

It also rejects claims of ill health were caused by the delay in finding out that the pension age was going to rise.

“Four complainants described physical symptoms they attributed to their financial position. Several of the complainants were in difficult financial positions regardless of their not knowing about the increase to State Pension age.”

The final conclusion is: ”it is clear that the complainants simply needed to undertake more research in preparation for their retirement, especially considering that four of the sample group took early retirement and have not provided any evidence that they had conducted any research or retirement planning prior to making their decisions(Retirement years: 2010, 2006, 2005 & 2009). If they had requested a forecast and
planned, they would have had plenty of time to react instead of retiring.”

Table in DWP submission suggests Ombudsman was asking for very little compensation anyway

The report also includes a table which seems to suggest – before the Ombudsman made his provisional decision to make no awards for compensation but to leave it to Parliament- that the levels of compensation would be low- a maximum if £450 and in some cases nothing.

Ombudsman’s provisional compensation recommendations according to the DWP.

As for personal details the DWP submission already contains an annexe with a lot of personal details of the six complainants which makes it all the more confusing why it should want more. I am not publishing the details to protect their privacy.

It strikes me that people need to question more why this extra information is needed when the department has so much already.

It must be coincidence that this request has come at the same time as Mel Stride, the works and pensions secretary, is facing litigation from CEDAWinLAW, a campaigning group for women, calling for mediation with the DWP to end this long saga.

It is time the Parliamentary Ombudsman and the DWP were more open about their agenda rather than hiding behind obfuscation and secrecy. I seem to be the only person probing what is going on.

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