Exclusive Fresh Update: Betrayal – Parliamentary Ombudsman dumps on 3.6 million 50s born women

Posted on December 12, 2022 by davidhencke

Leaked document now published says nearly all not to get one penny compensation – despite his finding of partial maladministration – and WASPI appears to have covered this up

For those who want to see the full document or the few doubters that this can be true – you can read the document here [ google docs] or see below.

phso-stage-2-provisional-remedy-summary-letter-8.12.22-copy-copy Download

Fresh Update: MPs on the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee have taken up this story by writing to Rob Behrens asking for an explanation of the proposed remedy that has been sent to six complainants. Read the letter in full here.

The letter from Tory MP William Wragg, the chair, reads: ” We have received reports that women affected by the changes are expected to receive minimal, if any, financial compensation…

“I would therefore be grateful if you could clarify:

whether any decisions around financial remedies have been taken or communicated
to those affected;
whether there have been any changes in the expected timeline for the final report;
and
whether there have been any changes in who will be eligible for compensation.”

In what must be the biggest betrayal of complainants since the Ombudsman was set up by Harold Wilson in 1967 Rob Behrens has put out proposals to deprive the vast majority of 1950s born women from any compensation for the maladministration suffered by being not personally informed about the rise in the pension age from 60 to 66.

The six people who complained will get £1000 each and another 600 who complained to the Ombudsman could get the money if the Department for Work and Pensions deign to pay them which on its present record seems unlikely. For the rest there is nothing.

This proposal is a far cry from the promise made by Angela Madden, the leading figure from Waspi, who told a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in September that payments of £10,000 to £20,000 each were a possibility for women who had missed out. See here. She has continually urged people to rely on the Ombudsman to sort this out – though recently has suggested a direct approach to the DWP to get a fair settlement because of the numbers of women dying.

A big emphasis has been highlighted by Waspi on making sensible demands and not going for full restitution – now on the basis of direct discrimination- as pushed by Backto60 and now by former judge Jocelynne Scutt, in her report.

Well this is the provisional settlement Waspi has got and it has not been worth the wait. Confidential proposals, seen by these blog, reveal this betrayal. It reads:

The Ombudsman’s proposed remedy -guaranteed £1000 offer to six people

“Our provisional view about remedy is that DWP should:

• publicly acknowledge maladministration in its communication about changes to State Pension age resulting from the 1995 Pensions Act and maladministration in its complaint handling

• publicly apologise for the impact that maladministration has had on the sample complainants and others similarly affected

* pay each sample complainant £1000 compensation for the injustice they have suffered

• establish and fund a compensation scheme to provide equivalent compensation [ie £1000] to anyone else who has suffered the same injustice as the sample complaints because of maladministration in its communication about State Pension age and its complaint handling

• provide an adequate and proportionate financial remedy to anyone who can evidence they suffered financial loss because they lost opportunities to make different decisions due to maladministration in DWP’s communication about State Pension age

• provide an adequate and proportionate financial remedy to anyone who can evidence they lost opportunities to add qualifying years to their National Insurance record because of DWP’s maladministration in not adequately using research and feedback about people’s understanding of the new State Pension to improve its service and performance.”

Now there are a barrel load of problems in this settlement. There also appears to be some level of deceit over recent pronouncements by the PHSO to Parliament and Waspi to the Daily Express and the Independent. First the proposed settlement. To get even this measly £1000 some 3.6 million 50s women have to both prove they didn’t get a letter and prove they lost opportunities to take different decision or lost out to pay in expensive sums to the DWP to build up their pension. Many of these women who were on the breadline would not have had the thousands of pounds of cash to do this.

Joanna Wallace destroyed all the complaining letters from 50swomen

Secondly very simply how do you prove you didn’t get a letter? The DWP has said it has no records and DWP’s so called Independent Case Examiner, Joanna Wallace, as I reported earlier -see here – has conveniently destroyed loads of letters she received complaining about this issue after being cleared of maladministration by the Parliamentary Ombudsman. It is almost as though there have been deliberate moves to make sure no evidence was available in advance of the Ombudsman’s decision.

I also found it extraordinary that the Ombudsman has put forward a remedy so quickly after being quizzed by MPs on the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee last month. At the time – see my blog here – Amanda Amroliwala, chief executive of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, was closely questioned by MPs about the 50swomen investigation and said it could take until March before the full investigation and remedy were published.

To give her the benefit of the doubt perhaps she was so taken aback by the questioning from MPs she may have speeded it up. More suspicious minds might suggest she daren’t tell them what the Ombudsman had in mind because it would create a furore. The only public announcement by the PHSO since then has been it has completed stage 2 of the investigation but still has no remedy in mind.

Angela Madden, chair of Waspi, showcasing her Jubilee Pin for going “the extra mile to improve the lives of others”. Pic credit:Waspi

The other extraordinary behaviour has been by WASPI. An article in the Daily Express on Friday quotes WASPI saying this.

Angela Madden, chair of WASPI, said: “These latest findings confirm the previous conclusion of the Ombudsman that maladministration took place at the Department for Work and Pensions. “But nearly 18 months after the Ombudsman’s first report, we are still waiting for his conclusions on a remedy. This is becoming a lengthy examination of the blindingly obvious.”

Now by then people had been informed of the proposed remedy. Perhaps Angela Madden didn’t know. or perhaps she didn’t want anyone else to know because it is obviously too embarrassing for their campaign.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s press office said they were unable to comment was the investigation was on going.

But John McDonnell, Labour’s former shadow chancellor and a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, said: ” This offer is completely unacceptable. I shall be raising it immediately with the PACAC committee”. As Shadow Chancellor he had offered a £58 billion settlement over five years. I await a response from WASPI.

In the meantime Rob Behrens, the Ombudsman, according to his posts on Linked In has been literally glad handing with President Zelensky in Kiev at a special Europe wide human rights conference. Someone ought to ask him about the human rights of the 3.6 million 50s women who will now be cheated by him out of any decent settlement. The DWP must be cheering him on.

As a matter of the interest the pension age for women in Ukraine is 60 – six years below the current age in the UK. See this link.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to continue my investigations

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00

£10.00

£20.00

£3.00

£9.00

£60.00

£3.00

£9.00

£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is appreciated.

Donate Donate monthly Donate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

$10.00

Fresh revelations on the national role of top NHS law firm disclosed in the latest hearing in the long running Dr. Chris Day whistleblower case

Posted on December 8, 2022 by davidhencke

A preliminary two day employment tribunal hearing has led to fresh revelations about the national role of one of the NHS’s top law firms, Hill Dickinson, that acted for Health Education England against whistleblower junior doctor, Dr Chris Day, in a case that has now been ongoing for 8 years and was also against the South London Trust Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust.

Day alleges Hill Dickinson failed to disclose over 200 commissioning contracts between Health Education England and NHS Trusts around England including a contract with Lewisham and Greenwich NHS. The significance is that these contacts proved Health Education England’s status as a second employer of junior doctors.

This is something that Health Education England and Hill Dickinson spent 4 years denying, between 2014 and 2018, at huge expense to the taxpayer in order to argue junior doctors out of whistleblowing protection.

This was in order to stop Dr Chris Day’s case ever being heard. The Tribunal were told that not one of these contracts was disclosed in the litigation and were obtained in 2019 by a freelance journalist, Tommy Greene who was writing about the case in the Telegraph. The scandalous focus of the hearing was that Hill Dickinson profited from not disclosing the contracts in litigation arguing that it was fanciful for Day to assert HEE as an employer of doctors.

Tommy Greene freelance investigative journalist Pic credit: Twitter

The Judge was told that Tommy Greene had also found that Hill Dickinson were paid handsomely to draft the very contracts that were not disclosed most notably the one between HEE and Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust.

The Judge was referred to a complaint to the legal regulator from Sir Norman Lamb and Tommy Greene that set these details out.

SRA Complaints Sir Norman Lamb (54000doctors.org)

And a debate in Parliament where the 2 MPs Justin Madders and Sir Norman Lamb further explored the matter;

Justin Madders stated;

“Health Education England effectively sought to remove around 54,000 doctors from whistleblowing protection by claiming that it was not their employer.”

Sir Norman Lamb stated;

“Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the contract between Health Education England and the trusts, which demonstrates the degree of control that Health Education England has over the employment of junior doctors, was not disclosed for some three years in that litigation? It was drafted by the very law firm that was making loads of money out of defending the case against Chris Day. I have raised this with Health Education England, but it will not give me a proper response because it says that the case is at an end. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is totally unacceptable and that it smacks of unethical behaviour for that law firm to make money out of not disclosing a contract that it itself drafted?”

Dr Day has fought an eight year battle with the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and Health Education England over protected disclosures about patient safety in the intensive care unit at Woolwich Hospital which associated with two avoidable deaths.

He recently lost a case against the trust despite it being revealed that hundreds of emails and documents had been withheld from him including notes of a crucial trust broad meeting which discussed and decided the fate of his case. Some 50,000 emails involving his case were also destroyed by a senior trust official, David Cocke, during the hearing. He was also due to be a witness in the case but never gave any.

This new hearing has been brought by Dr Day over ” wasted costs” in an earlier hearing after he was pressed to agree to a settlement with the trust which exonerated the NHS or face huge costs which would have lost him his family home.

Day was arguing that had he known the truth he would not have agreed to three separate compromise agreements made with the NHS, one of which protected all lawyers in the litigation from wasted costs stemming from misconduct and another that paid Day a £55k contribution of his legal costs which was only a fraction of what he spent resisting the false arguments in this case on HEE’s employer status.

At this hearing Day asserted that the settlements should be set aside after new information came to light following a freedom of information disclosure to investigative journalist Tommy Greene. The Judge at the hearing was also taken to references made by Tommy Greene and Sir Norman Lamb to fraud and other offences based on a legal opinion that had been instructed by Tommy Greene.

SRA Complaints Sir Norman Lamb (54000doctors.org)

In this hearing the Judge only had to decide whether Day’s wasted cost claim against Hill Dickinson was strong enough to progress to a full hearing where Hill Dickinson would be subject to a disclosure order for all relevant documents and emails relevant to this dispute. Hill Dickinson argue the settlement agreements should prevent the case progressing to full hearing.

The hearing revealed that Hill Dickinson were paid to re-draft contractual agreements for 200 other trusts as well as Lewisham and Greenwich. The contract with highest values was revealed as £79m. As Andrew Allen argued: “The LDA disclosed nearly three years after the 2015 strike out hearing,(an outdated LDA not drafted by Hill Dickinson), showed that the 2nd Respondent[ Health Education England] was responsible for substantial terms under which the Claimant”. This was a position that had been plainly denied on multiple occasions in several courts. Andrew Allen KC continued;

” The entire basis for the strike out application had been false. The argument run by the 2nd Respondent that it was ‘fanciful’ to suggest that the party which substantially determined the terms and conditions of the Claimant’s engagement was or could have been the Respondent was completely wrong.”

Extraordinarily Hill Dickinson claim that the lawyers representing Health Education England in the case did not know about the new agreement and even other lawyers working for Hill Dickinson didn’t know about it.

Andrew Allen KC said: “Had the Claimant known then what he knows now, he would not have entered into an agreement which could stop him applying for costs against Hill Dickinson. It is in the interests of justice to permit the Claimant to progress this application. His full skeleton argument is here.

Angus Moon KC pic credit: Sergeants’ Inn Chambers

Mr Angus Moon KC for the Health Education England argued that the non disclosure of the document was not relevant to Dr Day’s whistleblowing case. made no material difference to his case, and to throw out the agreement would break the finality of all agreements reached in courts. He also warned the press and the public reporting and observing the case that any reference to Hill Dickinson should not suggest that they had done anything wrong. He wanted Dr Day’s application struck out while Mr Andrew Allen, KC made it clear that this should not happen as the preliminary hearing could not investigate nor discuss the actions of Hill Dickinson without a full hearing at the tribunal.

Dr Chris Day’s Crowdjustice page explains more about what this hearing against Hill Dickinson was about with a link to the legal paper including Andrew Allen KC’s skeleton arguments. the link is:

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/junior-doctors-whistleblowing-protection

Dr Day has recently published a Linked In article explaining the twists and turns of his 8 years of whistleblowing litigation. The link is here.

Background note: Hill Dickinson is a 212 year old law firm, founded in Liverpool and now a big international firm. Its famous cases included acting for the White Star line, owners of the Titanic when it faced claims in the US courts after it sunk and for Cunard, owners of the Lusitania torpedoed by a German U boat in 1915.It also employed one of the first women to become a solicitor, Edith Berthen, in 1927.

|Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic reporting