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Updated: 2663 reasons why the Parliamentary Ombudsman is not working

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Sir Robert Behrens

Earlier this year I reported on a letter sent by Sir Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, to MPs on the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on why he could not implement a three year programme to improve the service for another year.

The letter revealed that Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, had decided not to go ahead with a three year funding plan to make it happen until 2022. As a result the Ombudsman would be expected to concentrate on complaints about Covid19 and would not have the budget to do much about improving the service beyond laying the bare bones of the idea.

I suspected that the service might be overwhelmed and asked for the figures on the number of people on the ” waiting list” to get their complaint heard and the number of cases where people were awaiting a decision. The media office declined to give me the information immediately and converted my press inquiry into a Freedom of Information request to delay it for 20 working days.

Physical queue could stretch from Millbank Tower to Westminster Bridge

We now know why. Figures released under that FOI request reveal that the Ombudsman show that a staggering 2663 people are in a virtual queue to await to be assigned to a caseworker. If everybody physically turned up ( not allowed at the moment due to the pandemic) it would stretch from the Ombudsman’s office at Millbank Tower right along the Embankment to the Houses of Parliament and possibly across Westminster Bridge.

They also released the figures awaiting a result from their complaint. That is 2699. So almost as many people are waiting to get to get a case worker to look into their complaint as the number of people waiting for a result.. That might explain the latest figures from the Ombudsman Office’s own performance standards review which shows that only 51 per cent gave a positive reply to the point “We will give you a final decision on your complaint as soon as we can”. It means 49 per cent weren’t impressed with that claim.

The Ombudsman’s Office have also told me that nowhere in their building is there ” any recorded information confirming that “the public will get worse service this year”. This seems to me more of an act of self denial than a possible statement of fact.

The Ombudsman seem to be relying on two mitigating developments to help them overcome this frankly appalling scenario.

Planned new NHS Complaints Handling Service

They are plans for a new model NHS Complaints Handling Service that will aim to take the pressure off the Ombudsman’s Office by trying to sort out patients’ complaints before they have to go to him. But as the section on this new procedure on the Ombudsman’s website discloses that these are only draft guidance. Participation by health bodies is voluntary and as yet plans for pilot projects have not been finalised. My guess is that probably the best health trusts will pilot it, the worst won’t want to know.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s latest controversial senior appointment: Rebecca Hilsenrath

The second move is the appointment of a £80,000 Director of External Affairs, Strategy and Communications to drive through the new strategy and report to Gill Fitzpatrick, chief operating officer. There is a full description on the headhunters website, Hays, of the job. Today ( April 12) the Ombudsman confirmed that the post had been filled by Rebecca Hilsenrath, the former chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who officially resigned last week. Three months ago Ms Hilsenrath was in the centre of a row that she had twice breached lockdown rules by going with her family to her Welsh country cottage. You can read about the allegations and her resignation in two articles I wrote for Byline Times articles here and here. By all accounts this is a very curious and controversial appointment.

Altogether the situation at the Ombudsman’s Office does not present a pretty picture. A cynic might say it is not a priority to put money into watchdog bodies because all it does is highlight problems when things go wrong. And a government that would love to stay in power forever wants to present the idea that the UK has world beating public services and hide anything that might detract from that propaganda.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman File

Here are previous stories on this blog on the issue

https://davidhencke.com/2021/03/20/revealed-the-ombudsmans-much-delayed-justice-train-for-50swomen-lost-pensions/

https://davidhencke.com/2021/02/21/parliamentary-ombudsman-dont-contact-us-well-contact-you/

https://davidhencke.com/2021/02/10/will-your-complaint-get-heard-as-the-government-forces-the-parliamentary-ombudsman-to-curb-its-service/

https://davidhencke.com/2021/01/25/why-the-archaic-parliamentary-and-health-ombudsman-needs-a-modern-make-over/

Women’s Discrimination: What is CEDAW

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The CEDAW logo

Since CEDAW will become a major issue in the forthcoming People’s Tribunal to be held later this year. I thought it might be worth publishing what exactly the Convention says . A number of people have asked what exactly it means for them. Some wonder whether it can help the 3.8 million people who lost their case in the courts and were refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

If you read this it sounds idealistic rather like some of the great statements of the past whether it was the founding fathers of the American Constitution or the founding charter of the United Nations. The reason why it is important is once this statement is written into law it follows that the law of the country has to change and people can cite the new law to end discrimination and protect their rights. This is statement is followed by an action plan on how the government of the day has to implement it. No wonder it has not yet been incorporated into English law.

Many many issues of discrimination against women will be affected

The answer is that all women would be affected by the change. CEDAW was cited by BackTo60’s lawyers in their case – but because even though the convention, ratified by Margaret Thatcher, is applicable in the courts and in Parliament because it had not been put into domestic law the judiciary they appear not to understand its implications.. If it was not only the 50swomen case but many, many other issues of discrimination against women will be on much stronger grounds.

Should as current opinion polls show the Scottish National Party win next month’s Parliamentary elections one of the first moves will include legislating to incorporate CEDAW into Scottish law. This will provide an early example of how effective the change will be for women and girls.

CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN

The States Parties to the present Convention,

Noting that the Charter of the United Nations reaffirms faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women,

Noting that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the principle of the inadmissibility of discrimination and proclaims that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, including distinction based on sex,

Noting that the States Parties to the International Covenants on Human Rights have the obligation to ensure the equal rights of men and women to enjoy all economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights,

Considering the international conventions concluded under the auspices of the United Nations and the specialized agencies promoting equality of rights of men and women,

Noting also the resolutions, declarations and recommendations adopted by the United Nations and the specialized agencies promoting equality of rights of men and women,

Concerned, however, that despite these various instruments extensive discrimination against women continues to exist,

Recalling that discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity, is an obstacle to the participation of women, on equal terms with men, in the political, social, economic and cultural life of their countries, hampers the growth of the prosperity of society and the family and makes more difficult the full development of the potentialities of women in the service of their countries and of humanity,

Concerned that in situations of poverty women have the least access to food, health, education, training and opportunities for employment and other needs,

Convinced that the establishment of the new international economic order based on equity and justice will contribute significantly towards the promotion of equality between men and women,

Emphasizing that the eradication of apartheid, all forms of racism, racial discrimination, colonialism, neo-colonialism, aggression, foreign occupation and domination and interference in the internal affairs of States is essential to the full enjoyment of the rights of men and women,

Affirming that the strengthening of international peace and security, the relaxation of international tension, mutual co-operation among all States irrespective of their social and economic systems, general and complete disarmament, in particular nuclear disarmament under strict and effective international control, the affirmation of the principles of justice, equality and mutual benefit in relations among countries and the realization of the right of peoples under alien and colonial domination and foreign occupation to self-determination and independence, as well as respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, will promote social progress and development and as a consequence will contribute to the attainment of full equality between men and women,

Convinced that the full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields,

Bearing in mind the great contribution of women to the welfare of the family and to the development of society, so far not fully recognized, the social significance of maternity and the role of both parents in the family and in the upbringing of children, and aware that the role of women in procreation should not be a basis for discrimination but that the upbringing of children requires a sharing of responsibility between men and women and society as a whole,

Aware that a change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality between men and women,

Determined to implement the principles set forth in the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and, for that purpose, to adopt the measures required for the elimination of such discrimination in all its forms and manifestations,

Pension mis-selling: Lorry driver’s victory against private pension firm in landmark court decision

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Royal Courts of Justice Pic Credit; Wikipedia

In 2012 Lorry Driver Russell Adams was down on his luck. His bank, the HSBC, had decided to call in his £170,000 mortgage on his £380,000 home. Desperate to raise money he thought of cashing in his frozen £52,000 private pension from Friends Life. He spotted an ad “‘release some cash from your pension” and was directed to CLP Brokers.

A friendly man called Ben Shepherd, told him “I could transfer it into a pension that would perform better and allow me to invest in better investments. I did not know much, if anything, about pension investment at the time and trusted what CLP told me.”

Since the transaction was going to be handled by a reputable private pension management provider then called Carey Pensions UK ( now Options UK Personal Pensions) he was reassured.

He was directed to invest in Store First, a Blackburn based storage facility, that made its money letting out what are known as store pods to people.

Mr Adams told the court that Ben was very keen on this because it was property and he made it sound safe and good for me. He then took out an execution only SIPP with Carey to include his investment. Ben was on commission for putting business that way.

What he didn’t know that CLP, based in Spain, was not authorised by UK law to give any financial advice. It was run by Terence Wright and Lesley Wright. Although Carey was unaware of this until May 2012, the Financial Conduct Authority had posted a warning notice in respect of Mr Wright in 2010. The notice warned that Mr Wright was not authorised under Financial Services and Markets Act to carry on a regulated activity in the United Kingdom, explaining that it believed that he “may be targeting UK customers via the firm Cash In Your Pension”.

Worse was to come. Store First was a dud – it hardly made a penny and Mr Adam’s investment was worthless.

So Mr Adams went to court. At the first hearing the judge found for the private pensions industry and exonerated Carey Pensions for any liability of managing an investment run by a guy barred from trading in the UK.

But last Thursday the Court of Appeal overturned much of the ruling saying Mr Adams was entitled to his money back plus compensation and furthermore Carey Pensions now Options UK Personal Pensions – could not escape liability by trying to blame Mr Adams for his own misfortune. The pension firm tried to appeal to the Supreme Court but were blocked by the judges.

Lady Justice Andrews: Pic credit: judiciary.com

The judgement has widespread implications. For a start some 580 other people had been advised to invest in the firm Store First and could claim their money back. The ruling also has wider implications in that your friendly private pension provider may well have to stop recommending you high risk investments by unregulated – or to be more frank- dodgy providers or risk the fate of Carey Pensions.

The judges in my view took the right decision. They said anymore with only £50,000 to invest is not a sophisticated investor and should be better protected than someone with a £1m to invest.

” Fresh opportunities for unscrupulous entities to target the gullible” -judge

Perhaps the comment from Lady Justice Andrews sums this up the best:

“As the unhappy history of the transfers of small personal pensions into SIPPs holding high risk investments related in that judgment illustrates, the liberalisation of the pension regime in 2006 brought with it fresh opportunities for unscrupulous entities to target the gullible, the greedy or the desperate.

“There is nothing to prevent a regulated SIPP provider such as Carey from accepting instructions from clients recommended to it by an unregulated person, and from doing so on an “execution only” basis. But the basis on which they contract with their clients will only go so far to protect them from liability. If they accept business from the likes of CLP, they run the risk of being exposed to liability under s.27 of the FSMA.”

The full case is here. There is also a report in the Financial Times here.

Independent panel of judges announced to head tribunal examining discrimination against women

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Dr Jocelynne Scutt. Pic credit: Cambridge Labour Party

The campaign to introduce a comprehensive bill of rights for women by implementing in full the UN Convention for the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) takes a major step forward this weekend.

Five high profile women -one a former judge – have agreed to serve on the panel which will sift evidence to be presented at the CEDAW People’s Tribunal later this year presided over by John Cooper, QC, a human rights lawyer,.

CEDAW is “like motherhood and apple pie” – John Cooper QC

John Cooper said the issue should not be controversial – ” it is like motherhood and apple pie”.

He said the tribunal should have three main goals – independence, transparency and authenticity.

” There are three main areas to investigate: Why CEDAW has never put into UK law; whether there was any good reason for not doing so, and most importantly, to make recommendations on what should happen next.”

The movement to implement comprehensive changes in the law for all women and girls has come from the historic unequal treatment of women and the exposure of poverty and hardship by women born in the 1950s who had to wait an extra six years for their pension. Campaigners pointed out that Margaret Thatcher had signed up to the convention as long ago as 1986 but it had never been properly implemented into UK law -despite Gordon Brown’s government passing the Equality Act in 2010.

Worse the position of the 50s women was just the tip of the iceberg of unequal treatment which covers everything from unequal pay to discrimination in the workplace and women being subject to harassment and sexual abuse and even given poor treatment in jails.

The tribunal will take place as the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales are considering implementing laws to apply the convention – leading to an extraordinary situation where women will have more rights and redress against discrimination and inequality in Scotland and Wales than in England. All this will bring home the issue to the present Tory government whether it wants to do anything about it or not.

The president of the new panel is the Hon. Jocelynne Annette Scutt, an Australian feminist and human rights lawyer and senior law fellow at the University of Buckingham. She has written about money, marriage and property rights and more recently about plastic surgery, women’s bodies and the law. She was Tasmania’s first anti discrimination commissioner and is a member of the Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party. She is a former judge in Fiji.

The other panel members are:

Christine Chinkin

Christine Chinkin, FBA is Emerita Professor of International Law, Professorial Research Fellow and Founding Director of the Centre of Women Peace & Security at LSE. 

She is a barrister, a member of Matrix Chambers. Together with H. Charlesworth, she won the American Society of International Law, 2005 Goler T. Butcher Medal ‘for outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights law’. She is a William C Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

She has held visiting appointments in Australia, the United States, Singapore and the People’s Republic of China. She is currently a member of the Kosovo Human Rights Advisory Panel and was Scientific Advisor to the Council of Europe’s Committee for the drafting of the Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.

Jane Gordon

Jane Gordon MA (Oxon) LLM (Distinction) is a human rights lawyer with over 20 years’ experience working in human rights legal practice and policy at domestic, regional and international levels. Jane co-founded Sisters For Change with her sister, SFC Executive Director, in 2014. Jane was Human Rights Advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board (2003-2008) where she co-devised the first ever framework for monitoring the human rights compliance of the police.

In 2009-2010, she was appointed Human Rights Advisor to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s national policing protest review. Jane has litigated cases of serious human rights violations against Russia, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine before the European Court of Human Rights, and advised national human rights institutions, public authorities and oversight mechanisms in Jamaica, India, Malawi, Iraq, Ireland and across the UK. Between 2008-2017,

Jane was a Senior Fellow at LSE’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights and LSE’s Centre for Women, Peace and Security where she delivered LSE’s practitioner short course on Women’s Human Rights. In 2013-2014, Jane served as gender advisor/SGBV investigator with the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. Jane is additionally a member of the Foreign Secretary’s Human Rights Advisory Group.

Aisha Gill : Pic Credit: Putney local website

Professor Aisha K. Gill, Ph.D. (University of Essex) CBE is Professor of Criminology at University of Roehampton. Her main areas of interest focus on health and criminal justice responses to violence against Black, minority ethnic and refugee (BMER) women in the UK, Georgia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Libya, India, Pakistan and Yemen. Professor Gill is often in the news as a commentator on early/child/forced marriage, violence predicated on ‘honour’, and sexual violence in South Asian communities.

Professor Gill has been involved in addressing the problem of violence against women and girls (VAWG) at the grassroots level for the past 21 years. She is invited adviser to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) strategic support group on investigations and complaints involving gendered forms of violence against women in the UK (including domestic violence); member of Liberty’s Project Advisory Group; member of Kurdish Women’s Rights Watch; Imkaan and Chair of Newham Asian Women’s Project (2004-2009). In October 2019, she was invited to join the Victims’ Commissioner’s Advisory Panel, chaired by Dame Vera Baird, QC.

Professor Fareda Banda Pic Credit:Black Female professors Forum.

Professor Fareda Banda, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.

She joined SOAS in 1996. She has convened and taught English Family law, Human rights of women and Law and Society since then. She has also contributed to various courses including Alternative Dispute Resolution, Law and Development, Law and Development in Africa and Legal Systems of Asia and Africa.  She has supervised PhD theses on topics including children’s rights, sexual violence against women, post-conflict reconstruction and gender. She writes on women’s rights, family law, and, more recently, religion. Fareda has been an active member of the School’s Equality Committee, first in her capacity as the union equality officer and more recently as the representative of the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences.

The new panel members are delighted and honoured to be appointed. Dr Davina Lloyd, Chair of the CPT Steering Committee, said:” The well being of future generations is in excellent hands”.

Expect more of this on my blog as the campaign gains momentum throughout the rest of this year.

A toxic indictment of the bungled nuclear decommissioning mess that cost taxpayers millions

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Steve Holliday: A damning report Pic Credit: Twitter

Report recommends a root and branch review of the National Decommissioning Authority

You have a right as a citizen to be kept safe from any dangerous pollution from the ageing 12 closed Magnox nuclear reactors and research stations in the UK. You would expect the organisation protecting us to hand out properly thought out contracts to do the job. The failure by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to organise a £6.6 billion contract to clean up properly cost taxpayers £97.5 million when rival companies who lost out successfully sued the agency forcing them to settle with them.

This month completely unnoticed by the national press Steve Holliday, the former chief executive of the National Grid, published a damning report on how the agency failed to do its job and the failure of its supervising body, the UKGI, to supervise it and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to keep tabs on what was going on.

So frightened were former senior executives of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority(NDA) of his inquiry report that they rushed to the High Court to try and get a judicial review to stop him ruining their reputations. They failed but delayed the report.

For the record they were John Clarke. the former NDA chief executive; Stephen Henwood, the former chairman; Robert Higgins, the former head of legal services; Mr Graeme Rankin, former head of competition and Mr Sean Balmer, former commercial director, He has spared their blushes by not naming them personally in his report.

Steve Holliday had in his remit the power to recommend disciplinary action against them for their failings. But he chose not to do so instead blaming the culture of isolation in the nuclear industry in general and the running of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in particular.

NDA failed to keep a grip

In broad terms the NDA failed to keep a grip on what has happening after they awarded the contract to the Texas company Cavendish Fluor Partnerships before it ended up in the courts where it was successfully challenged by rivals Energy Solutions and Bechtel. The original contract was changed so much and cost so much more – latest estimate is up to £8.9 billion that the companies who lost out were able to sue.

So imbued were the senior staff at the NDA with how clever they were in organising procurement contracts that they missed warning signs and worse didn’t inform the NDA board what was really going on until it was too late. The UKGI is revealed to have a conflicting role – both supervising it and sympathetically helping it sort out problems. He rightly suggests that it should be stripped of its day to day supervision.

The report says : “There appears to have been a culture that sought to self-justify, and which was inward looking. In particular: the NDA had a belief in its own skills and intellectual ability, and did not recognise or seriously contemplate that it may have any weaknesses, when contracting and managing external advisers, it had a propensity to limit their role, and did not appear to welcome strong challenge; and it failed to take sufficient steps to bring in people from other industries with different skills and experience, and to learn lessons from them.”

Damning conclusions picked up by a whistleblower

His criticism of the culture of the NDA has been picked up by Alison McDermott, a whistleblower taking the NDA and Sellafield to an employment tribunal, and may be quoted in her case expected later this year. The BBC recently did an exposure on bullying and harassment at Sellafield. The link to the story is here.

He recommends a root and branch review of the NDA by the business ministry- which has now handed the contract back in house – changing its structure and bringing in people from outside the nuclear industry and putting a top flight lawyer on the board.

I am worried that since there was so little publicity about this report whether the ministry will have the incentive to do anything about it. If it doesn’t we could see more waste of taxpayers’ money and we need changes for our safety in cleaning up some of the most toxic sites in the country.

Four years ago Sir Amyas Morse, then comptroller and auditor general , said “The NDA’s fundamental failures in the Magnox contract procurement raise serious questions about its understanding of procurement regulations; its ability to manage large, complex procurements; and why the errors detected by the High Court judgement were not identified earlier.”

We now need the National Audit Office and MPs on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee to keep an eye on this. He also has wider recommendations for the rest of Whitehall when it hands out big contracts.

Bradwell Nuclear Power Station; Being decommissioned under this contract

Previous Stories https://davidhencke.com/2017/10/26/nuclear-decommissioning-how-whitehall-turned-toxic-waste-into-a-dirty-mess/

https://davidhencke.com/2020/12/11/the-latest-toxic-progress-on-the-great-nuclear-decommissioning-mess/

Updated: The Ombudsman’s much delayed justice train for 50swomen lost pensions

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Sir Robert Behrens:Parliamentary Ombudsman

Parliamentary Ombudsman slips out progress report on 50s and 60s born women pensions complaint

It is commonly known in Whitehall that if want to bury bad news, choose an obscure part of your website, make a big announcement and don’t put out a press release .Yesterday I found out Sir Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, has done just that.

His announcement on the progress of his four year long investigation on maladministration by the Department for Work and Pensions over notifying the women amounts to pretty much a non announcement. Partly this is because he is restricted by an Ombudsman law which urgently needs updating, Partly it is his own fault that he has made so little progress.

I suspect that he may have thought it was a good idea to make this announcement because it was clear from the recent report on the Ombudsman by the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee that people are dissatisfied with his progress. There are conflicting reports that another announcement may be imminent to follow this up.

WASPI Cheltenham statement yesterday

Cheltenham WASPI 19th March

We understand that the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman may make an announcement “imminently”.We expect that this will be the official result of the first stage of their investigation. This will decide whether there was maladministration when we were given inadequate notice of the changes to our State Pension Age.

There are three stages that must be completed before decisions about any compensation can be made:Stage 1: Was there maladministration?Stage 2: If so, did the maladministration lead to injustice?Stage 3: If so, what recommendations should be made to put things right? This could include compensation.It is important to remember that a positive decision on maladministration does not automatically mean that we will get compensation. It is only the first step in the process. Please note that any decision made by the Ombudsman will apply to ALL 1950s women affected by a delay to their State Pension, not just those who have made an official complaint.You can read full details of this process, and how compensation is calculated, here https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/complaints-womens-state…We will let you know as soon as we hear anything further. In the meantime please share this information with anyone you know who’s affected.”

ReplyForward

It will have to be good if it is meant to mollify people he hasn’t done a good job. The announcement is good in explaining to people how an Ombudsman handles an inquiry and why people need to be patient but bad in hiding his own mistakes which have contributed to this delay.

The worst example of this was his decision to pause the investigation in 2017 the moment it became clear that the BackTo60 group, campaigning for the women, were going to the courts for a judicial review on behalf of the 3.8 million women who thought they had been cheated by the decision.

Belatedly yesterday he has now admitted this was false.

“We have reviewed the Court of Appeal’s judgment and it does not affect our investigation. Our investigation is looking at the issues from a different perspective to the courts,” says the announcement.

DWP lawyers argued in court that the ministry had no obligation to tell the women

The announcement suggests that – despite the DWP’s lawyers arguing in the courts that under the 1995 Act the DWP had no obligation in law to tell anyone about the change – that the failure to inform everyone affected properly could have been maladministration. The announcement admits that the first stage of the investigation on this matter is complete and they have a preliminary finding but are not allowed by law – under the 1967 Ombudsman Act – to tell any member of the public about it.

The second clue is that he talks about the second stage – which is discussing any financial remedy for maladministration. This can only happen if the first stage is proved. The advice says there were “complaints that women were given inaccurate information about the number of years of National Insurance contributions they needed to receive a full State Pension. We will be looking at this issue as part of stage two of our investigation. “

  “Our investigation is looking at the issues from a different perspective to the courts,” Parliamentary Ombudsman

What is depressing for the women is what the Ombudsman has ruled out . He won’t investigate full restitution or the payments of ” auto credits” – up to five years of insurance contributions only for men over the age of 60. The auto credits are controversial because originally the government intended to give them to women between 2010 and 2018 when they raised the pension age.

Low compensation

The level of compensation is also likely to be low – the one example he gives is a figure of between £500 and £950. In fact the Ombudsman can order anything from an apology and no compensation to over £10,000 in the most extreme cases.

This will be a drop in the ocean for those who have lost £40,000 or more from this decision.

It looks like any compensation will be for all including women born in the 1960s as well as the 1950s.

The real scandal is how long this will take. Covid 19 has already killed a substantial number of women in this group and bad health, stress and poverty is putting many others at risk. You only have to read the comments from people on my blog to see this.

No idea when he will report

He can’t even give a ball park date when he will report. The more he delays the fewer people will get any compensation because they will be dead. Unlike other inquiries the grim reaper will keep reducing the size of the overall compensation package.

While Covid 19 has left the government with huge bills, the effect of the pandemic since it is more severe on the elderly is reducing the Treasury’s pension bill and killing off those who would have got a pension later.

I wouldn’t suggest that ministers would be so callous to welcome the huge number of deaths among the elderly, but it is certainly saving them a lot of money on pension costs.

Official: The Department of Work and Pensions has never bothered to assess the impact of raising the pension age on the 3.8 million women themselves

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BackTo60 women outside the Royal Courts of Justice in 2019

It’s official. The Department for Work and Pensions has finally admitted after more than 25 years that they never thought of doing any impact studies on the effect of their decisions to raise the pension age from 60 to 66 for 3.8 million women.

A Freedom of Information request from a 1950s born woman seeking details of impact studies on the group of women most affected has forced the ministry to admit that there are none.

The letter says: “The Act does not oblige a public authority to create new information to answer questions; nor does it require a public authority to give advice, opinion or explanation, generate answers to questions, or create or obtain information it does not hold.
“If you ask a question, rather than requesting recorded information, we will provide you with the recorded information that best answers the question. Once we have provided the recorded information, we have met our obligations under the Act; interpreting the information provided is up to you.
“Your request makes statements and seeks to engage us in debate which you want us to
respond to. This would need new information to be created.”

No information held

It goes on : “We do not hold any recorded information of an impact assessment of the effects on women of the State Pension Age that informed the rises of 1995. However, you may find the following explanation useful. We have provided this outside our obligations under the FOI Act”.

The Department has released the White Paper that preceded the 1995 Pension Act and the impact statement the coalition government produced before implementing the 2011 Act which speeded up the rise. And guess what the ministry are right there is nothing about the impact on women before the government legislated for the change.

There is one concession – the idea of extending the auto credit of national insurance contributions to women. Men over 60 had this concession since 1983. Women would have had it once they started to raise their pension age from 60 in 2010 but of course this was never implemented and men continued to have it until 2018 when the pension age was equalised. Instead there is much concern repeated in the 2011 impact study of the effects of the change on business and occupational pensions. The 2011 impact study is more comprehensive but also concentrates on the savings the government will make.

Sir James Eadie

So no wonder Sir James Eadie QC when acting for the DWP in last year’s Court of Appeal case brought by BackTo60 to seek restitution for the 3.8 million affected made it clear that pensions were not a social measure aimed to reduce poverty or inequality. The ministry never had the issue on their radar when they introduced the change in 1995. These women were not even thought important enough to require an study on how it would affect their lives.

How the genteel retiree world of centenarians was shattered by the ruthless modern model of social care capitalism

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Mary Fielding Home, Highgate Pic credit: Mary Feilding Guild

This spring a group of very elderly, sharp minded and bright people will be evicted from a care home where they hoped they would end their lives by a ruthless capitalist who epitomises the new privatised world of social care providers.

The home is unusual in many respects. It caters for bright academics and authors and is a living community of a university of the third age – the oldest is 104 and still going strong. It also occupies a site on the borders of Highgate and Hampstead in London with a book value of £3.8m -a tempting find for any developer.

The group have been placed in this position by the failure of the unique trust, the Mary Feilding Guild, a charity set up in 1962 but dating back to 1882, to make ends meet. The combination of Covid 19, the closure of one of its properties on the site, not being in a position to take new residents, and the need for major modernisation all contributed. The value of the charity’s investments fell from £1.8m to £824,142 in one year.

So the trustees decided to sell it as a ” going concern ” with the aim of finding someone who would keep the residents there and have the funds to improve and modernise the home. Enter Mr Mitesh Kumar Dhanak or Mr Mitesh Girharlal Dhanak as he now prefers to be called. He offered to buy it as a going concern.

Mitesh Dhanak Pic credit: Precious Homes

Within five days of owning it for as yet undisclosed sum he decided to evict everyone by the end of May, declare the staff redundant, demolish the entire home and put a planning application for a new home to Haringey Council.

Mr Dhanak, 63 next month, is not a trained social care or health specialist. He is an accountant with a degree from Sheffield University. He set up his first business Precious Homes in 1994.

His views on the sector were outlined at a Care Conversation webinar on 14 October last year: ” “In terms of the KPIs ( Key Performance Indicators )that funds would look at, it’s property backed, it’s resilient cashflow, it’s government backed – it ticks all the right boxes.” He added later: “Unfortunately, the British press loves the horror stories. It’s about lobbying the government and making sure that our voice is heard and our contribution is recognised. It’s incumbent on all of us to try to do that.”

Now Mr Dhanak has created a complex group of interlocking companies – holding according to Companies House – 27 appointments. All of them are virtually one man bands – himself and a secretary and nobody else – making it difficult to follow his story.

They embrace a small number of care homes for adult care plus the elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease and a property company with investments from Neasden in North London to Barnsley and St Albans. He also got into an enormous tussle with Revenue and Customs when he moved some homes tax free into his pension based in Guernsey- but after a bitter battle he proved the tax people had made an error in law and he won.

The services he provides are rated Good by the Care Quality Commission and he has ploughed money from bank loans into providing a good standard. He also is a trustee of the Cheltenham Playhouse.

The centre of his operations are Precious Homes at Magic House close to Palmers Green. Each each company follows a similar pattern. They are £100 off the shelf companies and within days of him either setting them up or taking over from another operator their assets are mortgaged to the banks – his favourite ones being Coutts and Clydesdale Bank.

His latest £100 company which took over the Mary Feilding Guild home ,Highgate Care is a good example. He has already mortgaged the site to one of his own companies Precious Homes. But this time he has decided to go to a tax haven to get a second mortgage from the Waymade Capital, a Jersey based company run by brothers Vijay and Bhikhu Patel.

The company also has interests in health care, pharmaceuticals, and property and the brothers, both Kenya Asians, originally made their money by setting up a chain of pharmacies which they sold on to Boots. Vijay was awarded an OBE in 2019 under very controversial circumstances. An investigation by the Times revealed he had rebranded generic drugs and overcharged the NHS. This was not picked up by the committee awarding him the honour.

It wrote “Atnahs, a company he co-founded, acquired the rights to old medicines and increased prices by up to 2,500 per cent, costing the NHS at least £80 million. A packet of antidepressants rose from £5.71 to £154 and an insomnia drug soared from £12.10 to £138.” The company now has a financial interest in the Highgate home.

No answers to questions on finance or the price he paid

Mr Dhanak declined to answer through his communications agency any questions about the financing of his ventures or the price he paid for the property.

He did provide an explanation for his change of mind. “The team held meetings within days of completion as there was no desire to mislead residents or staff once a decision was made. Within five days, nearly 40% of the residents have already found potential new homes and we are confident that this trend will continue with the support of the Highgate House team.”

“Since the sale was agreed, the new owner in consultation with professional advisors reviewed the existing model and considered a number of options, including operating the home in its current format and concluded that regrettably it would not be possible to continue to provide care in the same way.  The home has been financially unsustainable for a significant period of time and the Mary Feilding Guild trustees would be aware that a new owner would have to make significant changes.”

owner intends to demolish property, says trust

The trust have also issued a statement: “We now understand that the new owner intends to demolish the existing property and build a completely new home on the site. Four days after completing the sale the purchaser announced a three-month notice period to the staff and residents after which the home will remain empty.

“However, it will take at least seven months to produce a detailed design, obtain planning permission, and commence construction. During this time the home could have been kept open for existing residents, and staff, rather than force them to move, and making staff redundant. The elderly residents will now be forced to seek alternative accommodation during the COVID restrictions, therefore severely limiting their choice.

Please don’t evict them by the end of May

” We are appealing to the new owner to reconsider this wholly unnecessary decision to shut the home immediately. We believe that it is not unreasonable to delay the closure procedure, to one month, before a start on site is possible. This would allow residents and staff reasonable time to consider their options, and by this time the pandemic should have eased.”

The lessons from this saga are two fold. The trust’s lawyers appears to me to have been very naive in not demanding guarantees for their residents in writing. And Mr Dhanak’s business strategy depends of an ever rising property market and ever bigger sums of money being available to local authorities for social care. If there is a major hiccup in either or both of these – the banks are going to demand their money back pretty sharpish and lot of vulnerable people are going to be evicted.

In the meantime Mr Dhanak can retire to his beautiful home in Hampstead Garden Suburb purchased for £2.5 million with a Clydesdale Bank mortgage, according to the land registry,. Here’s a nice picture of it.

Exclusive: General Medical Council investigation exonerates Dr Usha Prasad of any medical failings

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Dr Usha Prasad

Dr Usha Prasad, the cardiologist currently appealing against her dismissal from the Epsom and St Helier University Trust, has been exonerated by General Medical Council of any medical failings or putting patient safety at risk.

The decision by the GMC not only rejected a dossier of complaints from the trust but decided that the issue was closed and will not be re-opened again by the GMC.

The decision is part of a long running saga that has been going on for nine years and heightened by an anonymous letter sent by Dr Perikala, a staff doctor, who made the patient safety allegations in an anonymous letter to the General Medical Council, Care Quality Commission, Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of the trust and Jeremy Hunt, then the health secretary in 2015.

The GMC initially declined to investigate Dr Perikala’s anonymous complaint but the trust has persisted in pursuing her at the GMC.

dr james marsh pic credit: Epsom and St Helier University Health Trust

I understand Dr James Marsh, the trust’s medical director, and Dr Richard Bogle, the lead cardiologist at the trust, compiled a dossier of no fewer than 43 cases which they claimed should be investigated. The GMC narrowed it down to seven cases and sent them for review to a very distinguished consultant at the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough whose career has spanned work at Papworth Hospital and Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. The very detailed report came back completely exonerating her of any failings. She has also received glowing references from Pinderfields Hospital where she is currently working as a cardiologist after the Epsom trust dismissed her.

Dr Richard Bogle pic credit:www.richardbogle.com

The GMC’s decision comes just as an internal inquiry into her appeal is under way. This is being heard by Claire McLaughlan   an independent consultant, and Associate Director of  the National Clinical Assessment Service with an interest in the remediation, reskilling and rehabilitation of healthcare professionals. The case was also being followed by Dr Zoe Penn, Medical Director NHS England ,London Region and Lead for Professional Standards. She is sitting on the panel with Claire McLaughlan. Ms Mclaughlan runs a private business with her husband in Hampshire.

The fact that the hearing is taking place now is questionable since Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, told health trusts NOT to hold such hearings when the NHS is under pressure from the pandemic. I checked with the press office of NHS Resolutions and they have supplied me with the guidance for such hearings. They really should only be held if there is an absolute necessity and immediate risk to patient safety. Now with the GMC deciding there is no current and immediate risk to patient safety in Dr Prasad’s case – this makes the hearing even more questionable.

Officially the GMC will not comment on personal cases but they did confirm her clean bill of health entry on their public register which is reproduced below. All entries on this register have to be kept up to date on a daily basis. The saga continues but the case being made by the trust looks pretty weak after this decision by the GMC.

There are three earlier blogs on this issue.

They are: A bizarre tribunal hearing on the treatment of Epsom’s health-trust’s sole woman cardiologist

Top cardiologists back Usha Prasad’s fight against ” badly behaving ” health trust

Botched internal inquiry hearing into Dr Usha Prasad at St Helier Hospital as doctors fight death from Covid- 19

 

Since this blog was published I have had this strong message of support from Justice for Doctors. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Hencke, you are doing an excellent job by highlighting the problems with our NHS and how splendid doctors like Usha Prasad had been treated. It was very courageous of Usha to challenge the wrongdoings and the harsh decisions by our health institutions at a time when the GMC are calling retired doctors to rescue the overstretched NHS.

Without dedicated and committed doctors like Usha Prasad, our NHS will crumble and collapse. The misleaders and bullies will remain to demolish what goodness is left in our NHS. Unfortunately, most doctors retire or change location whenever they were unfairly challenged. Moving away will not solve the problem but encourage bullies and harassers to thrive and do more damage.

In our view, Dr. Prasad has won the moment she decided to stand firm and challenge the discrimination, the harsh and unfair decisions. We congratulate both of you for raising awareness about what goes on in our hospitals and congratulate Usha for her courage and conviction.
Thank you
On behalf of Justice for Doctors

Afghanistan’s horrendous choice: War with women’s rights or peace with servitude

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Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

Today is International Women’s Day and as my contribution I am focusing on Afghanistan as both the UK and the US cut their support to this country

I have recently come across a searing Congressional report from the United States Inspectorate on Afghanistan Reconstruction on the state of women’s and girl’s equality there.

Everybody knows the years of conflict which has cost British and American lives to rid the country of the Taliban regime and their horrendous treatment of women.

But this report shines a different light on the current plight of women just as the UK and the US are about to leave the country should a deal be possible between the war lords and the Taliban.

The United States has spent £564m in aid over nearly 20 years on women and girls

It reveals that during the never ending conflict from 2002 to 2020 the US has spent some £564.6 million on women and girls. On one level the achievement for women has been startling. From virtually no girls in schools under the Taliban there are now 3.5 million girls receiving an education. And a third of the country’s 210,000 teachers are now women but mainly in urban areas like Kabul.

There have been improvements in maternity care despite a horrendous death rate among pregnant women. Prenatal care coverage rose from 16 percent of pregnant women in 2002 to 61 percent in 2015. Postnatal care coverage increased from an average of 28 percent between 2005 and 2010 to 40 percent in 2015. And the number of trained midwives rose from a pathetic 467 in 2002 to roughly 4,000 in 2018.

There is, like many other areas, a huge disparity between urban and rural areas. Some 16 per cent of women died in childbirth in Kabul rising to an alarming 65 per cent in one rural province in 2002. This has improved with various estimates from the UK, Irish and World Health Organisation by between 19 per cent and 50 per cent, because reliable statistics are difficult to verify.

What has not improved particularly in rural areas is the attitude towards women. The US government also tried to encourage women to join the army and the police – this was the least effective of their programmes. “Targets have been highly unrealistic and unachievable. Although there has been a modest increase in the number of women police officers, women in all parts of the security forces face threats to their personal safety and pervasive harassment and discrimination,” says the report.

KABUL, 22 October 2019 – UNAMA Central Region Office in Kabul organized Global Open Day event, to facilitate discussion on women, peace, and security. The event was attended by 36 participants representatives from women rights activists, Government actors, schools’ teachers, local shuras, and university students. UNAMA CRO head of office In her opening remarks emphasized the importance of the Global Open Day as a forum to review the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. UNAMA Photo / Fardin Waezi.

The US aid has had more effect in getting women involved in politics and the community. The report says: “Afghan women have assumed leadership roles at the national, provincial, district, and community levels. At the same time, they face threefold threats: continued or intensified violence, the risk of Afghan peace negotiations leading to erosions of women’s rights, and a dire economic and humanitarian situation exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Covid 19 has caused big problems in Afghanistan. The report says: “The lack of testing capability means that up to 90 percent of collected samples are untested, and therefore go unreported. Of the limited number of tests conducted, Afghanistan’s positivity rate—the percentage of tests that reveal COVID-19 infection—was nearly 43 percent as of July 2020, one of the highest in the world.”

The World Bank is alarmed that widespread poverty will become worse as the Afghan economy is hit by the pandemic cd see those living in poverty rise to 72 per cent of the population. Cultural problems make treatment for women worse. “Due to deeply entrenched sociocultural norms, many Afghans are reluctant to allow their mothers, wives, daughters, or sisters to visit a doctor directly, or at all, if that doctor is a male.”

The future is not rosy in other areas for women. The report found “Some of the gains made for girls in access to education may not be sustainable, since a large portion of the education sector in Afghanistan is dependent on international donor funding for maintaining and expanding those gains.”

No level playing field for men and women in meetings

And it is not a level playing field in political meetings. One woman told the report “When we have meetings and both men and women raise their hands and show their cards, the respect that is given to men is not given to women. The time which is given to men is not given to women. When a woman speaks, she is not allowed to speak more than three minutes, but a man is allowed to speak more than 15 minutes.”

Women are still scared in many parts of the country to go out alone as they can face harassment and violence from men. SIGAR interviewed 65 people from all Afghanistan’s 14 provinces and both men and women said it was society’s constraints that held women back.

The time which is given to men is not given to women. When a woman speaks, she is not allowed to speak more than three minutes, but a man is allowed to speak more than 15 minutes.”

Afghan woman

Many interviewees—male and female—said that social and cultural norms are one of the biggest barriers to Afghan women’s advancement, particularly in rural areas. “Men in our community think the role of women is to sit at home and cook. If their mothers tell them to behave well with their wives, so they do, and if their mothers order them to beat their wives and misbehave, so they also do,” said a woman from Nangarhar Province.

President Biden will decide soon whether to completely pull out of Afghanistan which was the policy of the Trump administration. The UK, according to a leaked report to Open Democracy will cut aid sharply to Afghanistan shortly. Once again it will be women who will lose out and many of their fragile gains could once again be lost. As the report said if the Taliban and other war lords regain full control “the effort to promote women’s rights may be hampered by a growing narrative in Afghanistan that the country can either have women’s rights at the cost of peace, or peace at the cost of women’s rights.”

The full report by SIGAR is worth a good read.