Exclusive: Child sex abuse survivor gets his predator jailed 40 years after he committed multiple sex acts against him in London and Buckinghamshire

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Keith Hinchliffe. He contacted me and gave me permission to use his name to encourage other survivors to come forward and get justice in the courts and compensation.

Judge described him as ” an immensely impressive witness, honest, reasonable and composed under pressure”

A child sex abuse survivor has got justice 40 years after he was groomed and sexually assaulted by a paedophile who went on to commit other offences against boys in Holland and a girl in Kent.

Philip Saunders, 67, was sentenced to six years in jail, with the judge saying only a rule that sentences had to reflect the law in the 1980s stopped him from giving him an even longer sentence.

Keith Hinchliffe, now 54, was abused at Saunders home, in his car, in his office at night, at Wembley Stadium and his predator was given open access to Grafton Close children’s home in the London borough of Richmond to take him out to abuse him when he was put in care.. The abuse continued for three years starting when he was 12 until he turned 16. Saunders was 27 at the time.

His case raises questions again about the role of Richmond Council under Liberal Democrat control and the Met Police in the 1980s who took no effective action to stop paedophiles abusing children in the borough. Grafton Close is the same home where a Roman Catholic priest, Tony McSweeney, was jailed for three years for indecent assault after escaping justice for 35 years following a fresh Met Police investigation in 2015. Like Saunders, McSweeney was able to take boys out of the home with the help of John Stingemore, then the deputy manager of the home, who was already a convicted paedophile. Stingemore died before the case got to court. See my blog on this here.

Richmond on Thames Council sign

Keith reported the incidents to the Met police when he was at Grafton Close care home in 1984 and allegations that he had been propositioned for sex as a 15 year old by a woman staff worker at the home. The Met interviewed him and decided to take no further action.

Keith plucked up courage in 2019 to report the abuse again after seeing the BBC investigation into paedophile Jimmy Saville and went to the NSPCC who reported it to Thames Valley Police.

Unlike the Met, Thames Valley Police took his claims seriously and the case went to Reading Crown Court where Saunders tried to deny everything but he was convicted last October and sentenced in December.

The judge, recorder John Ryder, in his sentencing remarks in court, told the whole grisly story. He revealed that Saunders, after abusing Keith, went over to the Hague and sexually abused two boys in his care and was sentenced to two years and six months in jail. In 2005 in Maidstone he was jailed for four years for three indecent acts with a young girl, the daughter of his current wife.

Saunders got access to Keith and his family because he was his sister’s boyfriend for about a year. The judge described how he got Keith to stay overnight at his home in Langley and then asked him to sleep in his bed because he claimed the spare bed was broken. The abuse began overnight and then he was given expensive gifts. This included a microcomputer – rare in 1982 – a Raleigh bike and a Michael Jackson DVD, Thriller. He also exploited the boy’s passion for fast cars taking him to test drives and shows.

” unusually expensive gifts were to groom him for sex abuse”

As the judge said: “giving unusually expensive gifts coveted by an adolescent boy and exploitation of his interests were a means of grooming him to sex abuse.”

He also took pictures of him with an Instamatic camera naked or dressed up at his home, in his car, at work and at Wembley Stadium where he took him to see an American football match.

Keith told the Judge if he didn’t comply Saunders , who is six foot four inches tall, became violent.

The judge says he said: “If I didn’t do things, he would let me know. Arm behind back- pain” .”Rebuffed once and pinned to floor and decanter of scotch all over my face as punishment and made to pleasure him again.”

Other times he was plied with drink, forced to watch pornography and forced to perform oral sex on him.
These events made Keith feel both fear and shame and he started skipping school. The judge summed up his evidence as finding “relationships hard. No friends. Initial abuse hard, aftermath is life changing. Did not finish education. Rebelled. Hated the world and everything around me. Navigated life without education guidance and to relive events in court and answer challenges again and again – had almost broken him.” His changed behaviour led him to be put into care by Richmond council.

He was too ashamed to tell his family and feared his father, an ex merchant navy man, would take it out on him if he knew. He has now told his mother, his present wife and has children of his own and has a job as a furniture maker. But he told the police he now regretted never taking exams at school and getting a good job because of the constant abuse from Saunders.

The judge said:

“I found Keith Hinchliffe an immensely impressive witness, honest, reasonable and composed under
pressure about [a] sensitive and damaging experience. Impressive man.” He described him as an ” insightful and measured in expression”. “Trauma and fear and shame shaped his personality and altered [his] outlook on the world.”

The judge was highly critical of Saunders for trying to deny the whole story and showing no remorse for what he had done.

” You continue to deny any sexual activity at all with him.{You] told PSR author only interested in adult female relationships. That assertion is completely contradicted by the facts in the Holland conviction. I have no doubt on the basis of evidence I heard from KH at trial – he suffered substantial and serious psychological harm as result of your actions. {You] abused a position of trust in relation to him.”

The police interview with Keith revealed he partly came forward because he had seen in the media that perpetrators of historic child sexual abuse were now being caught and jailed.

Despite securing a conviction against Saunders he is now having to fight the Met and Richmond Council to get redress. They won’t admit they did anything wrong in the 1980s or had a duty of care towards him. In the second part of this grisly story I will be revealing their responses to him.

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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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How the St Georges, St Helier and Epsom Hospital Group fixed the dismissal of whistleblower cardiologist Dr Usha Prasad

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St Helier Hospital

After my blog on the double standards of the Epsom and St Helier University Hospital Trust over its treatment of whistleblowers which included references to Dr Usha Prasad, I received an email from the communications team of the hospital group.

According to the team I had got everything wrong. The whistleblowing case had absolutely nothing to do with her dismissal. They said: ” It is not correct to say Ms Usha Prasad was dismissed for raising patient safety concerns. A disciplinary panel concluded that she should be dismissed for competency grounds, concerns around her practice/conduct and because relationships with key colleagues had broken down. This decision was upheld on appeal.”

Technically they are correct. But if you delve deeper it shows that this disciplinary panel was a completely flawed process – ignoring vital information and chaired by a person whose integrity had already been called into question and falls into a management playbook used by other trusts to get rid of troublesome doctors who raise unwelcome concerns about patient safety.

Even the conclusion of this disciplinary panel used a fake term. The chair concluded that she was ” unfit for purpose”. There is no such term in English employment law – a system can be ” unfit for purpose” but an individual cannot. And this has been raised at the highest level in NHS England by colleagues of her when they met Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director, who could not explain such a term applying to an individual doctor.

Then there is the issue of competency. The big flaw in this is that after she raised her protected disclosure on patient safety the trust sent 43 complaints about her practice to the General Medical Council .These were organised by Dr James Marsh, then medical director of the Epsom and St Helier University Trust now Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer of the St George’s Group.

Dr James Marsh

Dr Marsh chose close colleague Dr Peter Andrews, a fellow renal physician who worked on the same ward, to investigate the claims, and Dr Ian Beeton, a cardiologist in private practice at nearby St Peter’s Hospital as an “independent” expert. Dr Beeton works with Dr Marsh’s wife, a radiologist at the same hospital. They asked Dr Richard Bogle, the head of the cardiology at the Epsom and St Helier Trust, to file the complaints who also works closely with private cardiologist Dr David Fluck at St Peter’s Hospital.

When it came to the disciplinary hearing the trust brought in Dr David Fluck to sit on the tribunal to judge Dr Usha Prasad. He also worked on joint projects with Dr Marsh.

I leave you to judge whether this was a genuinely independent investigation without any conflict of interest. But when the complaint went to the General Medical Council and was seen by a genuine independent cardiologist in Teesside and formerly at the world famous Papworth Hospital every complaint was thrown out. In fact I am told the GMC looked at the eight most serious complaints and decided there was nothing to see. And not only was it thrown out by the GMC , it decided to validate Dr Prasad as competent to work in any hospital in the UK for the next five years.

This GMC ruling was brushed aside by the disciplinary hearing and ignored by the judge when it came to an employment tribunal hearing later. The only clue came at the tribunal hearing when Dr James Marsh claimed that the trust had higher standards than the GMC. Frankly this was insulting to both the GMC and the eminent cardiologist who thought differently.

The second charge against her is that she couldn’t work with colleagues. Certainly relations with Dr James Marsh did deteriorate over her decision to say an elderly patient who died because the trust did not act on a serious heart condition was an ” avoidable death” and should have been notified to the coroner and the Care Quality Commission. Dr Marsh wanted this conclusion struck out and she refused to do it.

But if this is correct this would apply elsewhere and it doesn’t. Her work at Pinderfields Hospital in Yorkshire and at St George’s is praised by the hospitals and there have been no complaints about her relations with colleagues.

Dr David Ward

Dr David Ward, a close colleague of hers at St George’s, said this: ” I am pleased to say that I worked alongside Dr Usha Prasad when she was a visiting Consultant Cardiologist at St George’s Hospital (now part of the united Trust with Georges-Epsom- St-Helier or GESH). I found her to be collegiate, knowledgeable in general cardiology, skilled in her specialised areas (echo, heart failure etc). She was well-liked by all staff with whom she worked (catheter lab, echo). I (or anyone in the cardiology department at St George’s) never had any concerns about Dr Prasad’s clinical skills or competence and I find it most surprising that St Helier have retrospectively (for that it what it amounts to) found reason to question her abilities, coincidentally or not, after she had raised concerns about patient safety. I suspect this, also known as whistleblowing, is the underlying motive for the profoundly vengeful and unjustified response by the Trust.”

Claire McLaughlan

Finally there is the question of the disciplinary hearing itself. It was chaired by Claire McLaughlan – a profile of her is here – who ran into trouble with a judge at a hearing with cardiologist Dr Mattu, who won his case, for omitting evidence and over an interview for Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Health Trust with whistleblower Dr Chris Day, whose case is still continuing. He found the record of the interview with him had been altered, missing key points. As he had a secret recording of it, she had no alternative but to apologise and change back the record.

One final point. Dr Usha Prasad told me the former CEO of the Epsom and St Helier Trust, Daniel Elkeles ( now chief executive of the London Ambulance Trust) was prepared to “stop” the disciplinary hearing if I was prepared to drop “all you have against the trust; an ET case of whistleblowing detriment and harassment, discrimination”. One wonders how many back door deals take place over patient safety.

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The double standards on whistleblowing by Epsom and St Helier University NHS Trust

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Epsom Hospital

UPDATED: Since the publication of this blog the communications team of the St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Hospital Group have responded. It says:

It is not correct to say Ms Usha Prasad was dismissed for raising patient safety concerns. A disciplinary panel concluded that she should be dismissed for competency grounds, concerns around her practice/conduct and because relationships with key colleagues had broken down. This decision was upheld on appeal.

I shall be publishing a blog shortly on how this decision came about and how it was plainly unjust and directly aimed at ruining her career as a doctor.

An extraordinary missive has come to light from the leaders of the Epsom and St Helier University Trust ( now part of the St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Hospital Group) on whistleblowing.

The letter was sent to all staff to encourage them – that they will be safe if they disclose any unsafe practice or patient concern at the two hospitals. Indeed it says they shouldn’t hesitate to do so.

Ostensibly this followed the scandalous murders of babies at the Countess of Chester hospital which led to nurse Lucy Letby being sent to prison. The management of that hospital behaved appallingly threatening any doctor who raised the issue to cover it up and there will now be an independent inquiry.

What the letter doesn’t tell you about is the real behaviour of the top managers of that trust - its authors, chair Gillian Norton and chief executive , Jacqueline Totterdell – if anyone dares to report if something is wrong.

Dr Usha Prasad and the previous chief executive, Daniel Elkenes in better times

For this letter came out just six days after the trust were planning to land their biggest whistleblower, former consultant cardiologist, Usha Prasad, with a £180,000 costs bill for daring to raise the case of an ” avoidable death” of a heart patient at the trust and claims of racial and sexist discrimination. See hearing here.

Usha Prasad, who was dismissed by the trust, has had years of fighting the top management through employment tribunal hearings. The trust has spent a small fortune of taxpayer’s money employing battalions of lawyers to prove her wrong. The two top officials have been deaf and blind to any appeal on her behalf for reinstatement, including a letter from the chair of the British Medical Association.

Jaqueline Totterdell – chief executive

Worse than that the lawyers led by Jessica Blackburn from Capsticks and Nadia Motraghi KC, from Old Street Chambers, have continually derided her attempts to defend herself. Jessica Blackburn described her whistleblowing claim as ” unmeritorious” in correspondence and Nadia Motraghi, described her case having ” no prospect of success” during the latest cost hearing which led the judge to order her to pay £20,000 in her absence. She also painted a picture of her making a fortune as locum -based on no recent evidence- and appeared to be an expert on London house prices to justify her paying the bill.

Jessica Blackburn rushed to send her the bill only for another judge to stay the payment as Usha Prasad, a brave fighter, is to appeal the original judgement against her later this year. The trust are still charging interest at a daily rate while she appeals.

So if I were an employees of the trust I would be beware of the silken and siren tones of the letter below and think very carefully before reporting anything to the top management. Think instead of the fate of Usha Prasad.

This is a serious shame because the sentiments in the letter are fine but the reality is rather different. I am afraid I think this is more a public relations exercise than really the top management being committed to real change. I fear reputational damage always outweighs concerns about patient safety.

Read the text of the letter below:

Dear colleagues

The news of Lucy Letby’s crimes has shocked us all. These acts were a profound betrayal of patient trust, and we hold in our thoughts all those who have been affected.

We welcome the independent inquiry that will take place to identify every lesson that can be learned and to do all possible to prevent anything like it happening again.

While dreadful events like this are thankfully extremely rare, this is a stark reminder of the vital importance of us all feeling safe and confident to speak up, raise concerns, or whistleblow if we are worried about something.

We are all crucial in making sure our services run safely for our patients. It’s so important that every one of you – whatever your role – feels safe and confident to raise concerns if you have any worries. We want you to know that we will always take these seriously and you will not get into trouble for speaking up. If you feel you’re being treated differently for doing so, let us know and we will act as necessary. If you have something to say, please don’t hesitate.

Our responsibility doesn’t end with speaking up; it extends to listening to concerns and addressing them. Really listening and responding in the right way to the concerns of patients, families and colleagues should be an integral part of how we work and support each other. We know that sometimes when you raise concerns things don’t happen quickly enough, and we are introducing new measures to improve this.

In the meantime, how we respond to incidents will be strengthened across the NHS with the launch of the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) from September. It will increase opportunities to learn and improve, and for closer working with those involved.

We have a Raising concerns at work policy with more detail on the process. In summary, if you ever have concerns there are several ways you can report these, including through your manager or lead director, our Freedom to Speak Up Guardians, or, if you feel it cannot be resolved internally, organisations external to the Trust.

And of course, you can speak directly to us, or any member of our executive team or Board – we are here to listen and act as necessary on what you say.

We are sure that many of you will have found these recent events upsetting, and if you would like to talk to someone please do reach out to your line manager or to our staff support service – email esth.staffcounselling@nhs.net  or call (number deleted)

Thank you for everything you do every day to keep our patients and families cared for and safe.

With best wishes,

Gillian Norton, Chairman

Jacqueline Totterdell, Group Chief Executive

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Exclusive: Legal papers lodged at the High Court to start proceedings against Mel Stride over 50swomen pensions

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Royal Courts of Justice

UPDATE: Papers have now been served on Mel Stride, Secretary of State for work and pensions, and the DWP for acting unreasonably in refusing to agree to mediation over the issue of the six year delay to 1950s women’s pensions. The ministry will now have 21 days to file a response and then the case will have to go to court.

The Government’s attitude in not recognising there is a problem chimes well with their handling of the Post Office postmaster’s scandal and in delaying compensation for people hit by the contaminated blood scandal. Their attitude to my mind suggests there is a Whitehall playbook to avoid paying people any compensation for as long as possible, probably drawn up by Government lawyers, in the hope that many people will be dead before the inevitable pay out is made.

Since the publication of this blog the DWP has confirmed it is now involved in litigation with CEDAWinLAW but does not wish to comment about it.

But interestingly Rob Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, has pulled back from his threat to pause his investigation ( see below). He now says he will review the position only if the courts give permission to CEDAWinLAW to bring a judicial review. This means the confidential consultation will continue until January 19 and the report is still scheduled to be published on March 23.

The legal battle against Mel Stride, the work and pension secretary, over his refusal to consider mediation in the long running dispute over50s women pensions has begun.

Papers were lodged at the High Court yesterday by lawyers representing the campaigning group .CEDAWinLAW on behalf of 3.5 million people who faced a six year delay to receiving their pension.

In a statement the organisation said:

“CEDAWinLAW earlier instructed Professor John Cooper KC, ‘One of the Top 10 influential lawyers in the UK’, 25bedfordrow.com and David Greene, Senior Partner, edwincoe.com to represent ALL 1950’s Women in a judicial review against the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions in relation to the DWP’s refusal to mediate following from the Judge’s Report which sets out in depth the way in which those affected have enforceable rights which have been breached.

We are delighted to announce today that our legal team has issued at the court an Application for a Judicial Review in the matter which, in turn, is now being served on the Respondent.

Included as part of the lodged Application & Bundles, an expert witness statement authored by The Hon Dr Jocelynne Scutt AO, the former Australian judge, who produced a report on the discrimination faced by 50s women.

Please kindly donate to meet our legal team costs and @crowdjustice platform fees. The link is :https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/group-class-action/ “

Mel Stride, Work and Pensions Secretary

The lodging of the papers will mean the Department for Work and Pensions will have to lodge a response to the new judicial review breaking their silence over the matter and their refusal to contemplate any mediation over the matter.

What the position of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Robert Behrens, to this new development is not entirely clear. He is handling a separate case involving maladministration and is currently consulting in confidence over 500 people and the six complainants on his final report until January 19. His plan was to publish it on March 23 just a few days before his retirement. His main findings and the Department’s response to him were published on this blog here and here.

During a hearing with the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in November Mr Behrens in a reply to Ronnie Cowan, the Scottish National Party MP for Inverclyde, said:

“It is not in our hands, Mr Cowan, to be able to be definitive about what the end date is going to be. If there is further litigation, then that will delay the process even further. That is out of our
hands.”

It now is and his reaction and the DWP’s reaction to this new development is awaited.

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Exclusive: Mel Stride now facing legal battle over refusal to agree to mediation over 50s women compensation for lost pensions

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Mel Stride work and pensions secretary

Lawyers for CEDAWinLAW, the group fighting for equality for all women, have now drawn up papers to take Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, to the high court over his failure to agree to any mediation to sort out the seven year running sore over settling the 50swomen pensions issue.

CEDAWinLAW in a statement today said: ” CEDAWinLaw is best pleased to announce that its legal team is about to file an application to the court to commence legal proceedings on our behalf representing all against the secretary of state for work and pensions.”

“Without waiving privilege CEDAWinLAW is pleased to say that leading counsel advises that there are grounds to seek permission to launch a full Judicial Review based on an unreasonable refusal to mediate and they are to be pursued on behalf of ALL 1950’s Women.”

The decision follows work by lawyers Edwin Coe and human rights KC John Cooper to draw up a case after their crowdfunder raised enough cash to prepare a legal strategy. The crowdfunder is now raising funds to fight the case in the courts.

The legal challenge will be on behalf of all 3.5 million remaining 50s born women who faced a six year delay before they got their pension with many of them saying they never realised the change was coming.

Mel Stride himself at first tried to ignore any call for mediation by not replying to a request from mediation lawyers Garden Court Chambers which was prepared to act as a mediator. But the request itself triggered a legal process and in the end he replied refusing any mediation.

It has since become known that the DWP in a confidential submission to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Rob Behrens, has said it has done nothing wrong re maladministration and said to pay any of the women compensation could amount to the ministry facing “a major fraud.” See my blog on this here.

The case for the women has been strongly articulated by former Australian judge Jocelynne Scutt in her judge’s report on the inequalities they faced.

She said: “The 50s women have the right not to be discriminated against on the ground of age and/or sex. Those rights are enforceable. However those rights have been breached by the failures and actions of the Department of Works and Pensions in the way they failed to notify, and in the way they went ahead to apply the legislation albeit they had failed to notify and therefore the 50s women had no notice of the need to reorganise their retirement plans or their paid work arrangements. “

She has recently recorded a fresh video:

Jocelynne Scutt

John Cooper, KC , who will arguing the court case, said:

“ This is an important challenge for so many in this country. The weight of the evidence indicates a grave injustice to them, and we will robustly represent their interests as we move forward with the assistance of a first class legal team.”.

CEDAWinLAW have notified party leaders, party deputies and committee chairs plus Sir George Howarth’s ADR group about the legal action with the mobilised ’s voting bloc also in mind ahead of next year’s General Election.

Ian Byrne MP has agreed to apply for a Back Bench Debate on Mediation and Kim Johnson MP plans to table an Early Day Motion on Mediation.

The petition to Parliament has been updated. See here.

In another development the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Rob Behrens has extended the consultation on his proposals to handle the maladministration report by making no recommendation for compensation but leaving it to Parliament to decide. It will now finish on January 19 rather than by Christmas.

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Francisca Holmes verdict: Judge says she is a whistleblower but did not suffer detriment from the trust

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Francisca Holmes

Nurse Francisca Holmes lost her case against Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust yesterday when Judge Eoin Fowell ruled that she did not suffer detriment or discrimination after she blew the whistle following finding a dead patient in a ward at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich.

He did say that she had legally made a protective disclosure on patient safety and health and safety following the death of patient MS, a frail elderly lady, admitted with breathing difficulties during the Covid pandemic in May 2020.

But he did not agree that the events that followed where she said she suffered detriment and was ” set up to fail ” including being put on inconvenient shifts, left in charge of the ward without a matron, passed over for courses, had a pay cut just after a pay rise, and being accused by Mr Katandika [her ward matron] of leaving without handing over her patients to the next staff shift putting patient safety at risk contrary to the nurses’ code of conduct.

The judge accepted the trust’s case that because of the Covid pandemic not all procedures , particularly over shift working, could not be followed because of staff shortages caused by many of the nurses catching Covid.

He also decided that there was no evidence of age or race discrimination and thought that Ms Holmes had misinterpreted what had been said to her.

His verbal judgement ( it will not be published unless either of the parties requests the papers) went into considerable detail of each event, drawn from the papers submitted by the trust.

One of the key points he emphasised was the long delay before Ms Holmes made the protective disclosure – not until early in the following year- which he accepted that neither Mr Katandika or any other managers were aware that they were facing a whistleblower complaint. Ms Holmes, in her own statement to the tribunal, said she wasn’t quite sure how to do this and thought it was being investigated. In fact investigations stopped and the death was put down as a “patient incident”.

Jean Firaza

The other key point for him was that the trust’s competency book, compiled by Jean Firaza, a Filipino manager and one of the people she criticised as being hostile to her said she was a good nurse and could work independently. She had few meetings than normal with Mr Katandika or Jean Firaza, to discuss her progress because she was doing well, the judge concluded. Again he blamed the Covid situation.

He also said she could have applied for promotion but had chosen not to, which is why the post went to another nurse and her complaint about losing a place on a training course was on a course as a cardiac nurse, which was designed to help another nurse and she had not applied to do that course..

Grievance allegations took a long time to investigate

He agreed that the investigation into her grievances had taken time to complete which meant she did not know what was going on. Lucie Kabatesi, was both writing and investigating her grievances while she was matron in the hospital’s busy accident and emergency department. But he said that an assertion given by her solicitor, Winston Smith, that ” she had been “chasing, chasing and chasing” to get the verdict were not born out by the evidence as there no emails showing she had done this.

He also cited Thurdy Campbell, a former manager of her ward 22, as being sympathetic to her including reducing the number of patients she had been asked to look after when she seemed to have been given too many.

But Thurdy Campbell, despite being a key manager in her life, was never called to give evidence by the trust. If she had the judge would have had to at least consider a different aspect on this case. She has told me that she had raised patient safety issues about the reconfiguration of Ward 22 as a Covid ward just two days before the patient’s death, suggesting there may have been problems there.

She also has told me that when she decided to take up Ms Holmes’s case she had a warning from senior management not to do it. She has added now that she had witnessed Ms Holmes being bullied in the ward as well.

It seems to me that the trust, obviously advised by their lawyers, Capsticks, and Old Square Chambers, is selective about who it calls in whistleblowing cases. Even though Thurdy Campbell was no longer working for the trust she could have been contacted about this. Other witnesses called by the trust now have different jobs but still gave evidence.

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