If pensioners die from winter cold should their gravestones be engraved with the words ” Frozen to Death by Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer ” for eternity?
This is the recording of my interview last night with Ian Rothwell of Salford City Radio on the failure of the government to agree yet to any compensation for the women born in the 1950s who had to wait six more years to get their pension and the government’s sudden cruel decision to abolish the winter fuel allowance with little notice for 10.8 million people.
A reminder the original story on my blog has now got over 190.000 hits reflecting the strong feeling people have about Labour’s decision to do this leaving many of the poorest pensioners, many over 80, between £200 and £300 worse off this winter by setting such a low income level to qualify for the money.
New revelations by the BBC TV journalist Michael Buchanan today show what appears to be serial bullying and abuse towards women claimants by Judge Philip Lancaster at employment tribunal hearings
His news report today reveals that eight women have now separately come forward to say they were badly treated when they presented their cases before the judge since 2018. They describe their experience before him as “patronising, degrading, psychologically abusive, and misogynistic.”
The 67 year old judge who presides over employment tribunal hearings in Leeds is often rude and abrasive towards women and in one case even suggested that a claimant had mental health problems.
One woman claimant Angela Gates brought a case of disability discrimination and constructive dismissal against her employer in 2021.
She says a hearing in front of Judge Lancaster made her feel “like a villain being prosecuted”.
She says: “I felt I couldn’t give my side on anything.”
The four-day hearing was held on Zoom, and Ms Gates, 53, says Judge Lancaster regularly shouted at her, repeatedly telling her to be quiet. She says his behaviour was “appalling and degrading, verging on psychological abuse”, adding: “I don’t believe I’ve been given a fair trial.”
Another woman, who wished to remain anonymous, had similar treatment over a constructive dismissal and unfair treatment case.
“He made my life hell “
She said: He made my life hell,” she recalls. “He’d put his hands on his head, and appeared disinterested in what I was saying. He repeatedly asked why I was asking [my employer’s witnesses] particular questions and raised his voice numerous times. I felt useless.” She is now appealing the ruling.
Seven women are now planning to contact their MPs about their treatment as it is virtually impossible to complain about a judge as the system is rigged against them. You can refer a case to the Judicial Conduct Investigation Office or previously complain to Judge Barry Clarke, President of the Employment Tribunals in England and Wales. Or even to the Senior President of Tribunals, Sir Keith Lindblom. All seem set up to protect judges not complainants. Barry Clarke refused to act and Sir Keith ignored it.
Judge Barry Clarke, President of Employment Tribunals in England and Wales – protecting judge Lancaster from complaints
In a letter written by Alison McDermott, a management consultant, who complained about the way Judge Lancaster treated her in her case against Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, to Adam Jones of the Judicial Conduct Investigation Office she says:
“It is simply not tolerable the way this judge has conducted himself, whether it is arbitrarily excluding the public, treating me less favourably, allowing bullying in the courtroom, treating me with hostility and contempt, ignoring evidence, attempting to block evidence, actually blocking exploration of evidence, vilifying me, acting partially, and failing to document procedural matters.
” I urge you, therefore, to conduct a thorough investigation into what went so badly wrong in my case and to exhibit, transparency and accountability – behaviours which the legal profession professes to uphold. I sincerely hope that I and the other key witnesses mentioned in this letter of complaint will be interviewed, as would occur with any other formal complaint or grievance investigation. In my experience as a consultant with over 20 years investigating organisational cultures and problems, it is not washing dirty linen in public that causes a problem but allowing it to fester in plain sight.”
Of course the office had no intention of doing such a thing. Judges, as I reported yesterday, are protected because the notes on the cases are kept private even when they are the only official record of the tribunal hearing. It is impossible to get hold of the evidence that would prove a judge was biased and judge Clarke would not reveal how many complaints he has received.
05/07/2024. London, United Kingdom.Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood. poses for a photograph following her appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street
So this leaves the Lord Chancellor to act but as I reported yesterday it is almost impossible to write to her directly – without officials in the ministry of justice or the judiciary intervening.
I would have thought Shabana Mahmood, a highly successful woman with an ethnic minority background, should ask for an investigation into Judge Lancaster. Many of the women who complained about him are from ethnic minorities as well. None of them should have had to put up with such egregious treatment and does the Lord Chancellor want to preside over system where a judge can treat women as dirt.
05/07/2024. London, United Kingdom.Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood. poses for a photograph following her appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street
By David Hencke and Alison McDermott
Direct complaint to the Lord Chancellor signed by 150 people is being blocked by officials at the Ministry of Justice
Whitehall and the judiciary are engaged in an extraordinary exercise to block, obfuscate and deny there is a legal issue over the public release of judge’s notes where they amount to an official record in employment tribunals.
We are now in the absurd position of Barry Clarke, the President of Employment Tribunals in England and Wales, both admitting the judge’s notes where tribunals are not recorded are the only official record but saying at the same they must remain private because they are personal notes under the Data Protection Act.
Employment tribunals are already in transition. After a new practice ruling the aim is that all hearings will be recorded but that is not happening yet in many cases. Also transcripts of the hearings can be made available but litigants have to buy them at huge cost and are not provided before the six weeks deadline to appeal. So what’s the point of them ?
But for a majority of tribunals the only official record is the judge’s notes – which can be used by appeal judges when they are adjudicating on an appeal to guide them. Barry Clarke has recently ruled that they are the official record but the public, press and both parties involved in a case cannot see them.
Thus the one vital official record of what the judge has recorded about the case is kept secret – contrary to any policy of transparency and open justice. It also means judges are not open to scrutiny, could be biased against either the claimant or defendant, are out of step with other European court systems and in the days of digital recordings, keep an archaic system of hand written notes. It also means if there are complaints against judges – the secrecy of the notes means the judge can withhold the information to prove it which is very helpful to an errant judge.
So what is legal position of this which allows this type of official record to be withheld? This is the question that led Alison McDermott, a former ET complainant against Sellafield, and 150 other people to wrote to the Lord Chancellor demanding an explanation, using the examples I have quoted and many more.
The letter is here. But guess what? You can’t send it direct to the Lord Chancellor’s Office or even to the Lord Chancellor as an MP unless you are a constituent in Birmingham, Ladywood. Instead you can only write to the ministry of justice and hope it can be passed on.
Dame Sue Carr: Pic Credit: Rory Lindsay
So Alison McDermott and I decided another tack. I put questions into the Ministry of Justice press office to ask for explanations. Alison had previously been told by Dame Sue Carr, the Lady Chief Justice that the only way she would get answers was to go to the Appeal Courts – an incredibly expensive business. This is also absurd as it puts the onus on the claimant to get a ruling to clarify the law and makes a lot of money for lawyers. Most people are not involved in tribunals so why should they be denied from knowing where the law stands?.
These are the questions I put to the Ministry of Justice which it refused to answer:
1.Does the MoJ agree that an official record of legal proceedings, including Employment Tribunal hearings, must be made available to parties and the public?
2.Which specific law or authority allows judges to withhold their notes from ET proceedings, given that ET President Barry Clarke has recently confirmed that these notes serve as the official record where no other record exists?
3. If no such law or authority exists will the MoJ commit to releasing all judges’ notes?
4.. If not, does the MoJ acknowledge that judges’ notes cannot be considered the official record, as official records must be accessible?
5. In the absence of an accessible official record, does the MoJ agree this breaches the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the Human Rights Act? If not, what is the justification?
6. Why is the MOJ suggesting that this can be resolved by individual appeals, as proposed by the Lady Chief Justice to Ms McDermott, rather than providing a clear policy response that would benefit all ET users?
Answer came there none. The ministry declined to answer any questions and said it was a matter for the Judicial Office to answer the questions.
I put the same questions to the Judicial Office press office. I heard nothing for a week and then sent them a reminder. The initial response was to refer them back to the Ministry of Justice until they suddenly realised I had already contacted them.
The office then sent a reply. This is it.
“We have answered the questions we can from a judicial perspective (see below) but other questions are for not for us and you may wish to ask other parts of Government.
Parties involved in an Employment Tribunals are given decisions following a hearing. If the decision is a judgment, the Tribunal will either give an oral judgment with reasons or reserve its decision and give a written decision at a later date. ” It goes on to quote existing rules and procedures.
So here we have it. They haven’t answered my questions. There is a failure to confirm what the lawful basis is for a judge to withhold the official record of an ET hearing and they have side stepped whether the refusal to do so breaches the right to a fair trial.
Judge Barry Clarke, president of the England Wales employment tribunals- an outlier with Europe advocating secrecy
Alison using AI found how outdated and Nethanderal this is compared to other advanced democracies. In France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Italy all parties have access to the judges’ notes. This leaves the UK as an outlier, failing to provide basic transparency in proceedings that can have life-altering consequences. .
It added: “The practices in these European countries generally support greater transparency and access to court records, including judges’ notes, in employment cases. This trend aligns with principles of fair trial and effective appeal rights, as parties are given the opportunity to fully understand and, if necessary, challenge the basis of decisions made against them.”
The conclusions using AI are very powerful;
“The current state of the UK’s employment tribunal system is untenable and legally questionable. It operates on a contradiction that undermines the very principles of justice it’s meant to uphold. The solution is clear, legally grounded, and non-negotiable:
Judges’ notes must be released to all parties.
All hearings must be recorded.
These records must be made accessible to all parties involved.
These steps are essential for maintaining the integrity of the UK’s legal system, ensuring compliance with human rights law, and upholding the principles of natural justice and open courts. The time for obfuscation and delay is over. It’s time to resolve this legal paradox and restore faith in our justice system. Release the notes, record the hearings, and let justice be truly seen to be done.”
Only in the UK do we pursue a policy of secrecy masquerading as privacy to cover up official records, frustrating claimants and respondents in employment tribunals, and protecting judges from any scrutiny that could effectively challenge them. What a backward country we are. A judicial review can change this and looking at procedures in Europe eventually lead to a well deserved adverse ruling against the UK in the European Court of Human Rights. We understand that the Lord Chancellor holds the copyright to all court records so she can decide to release them.
05/07/2024. London, United Kingdom. Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer poses for a photograph following her appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street
UPDATE: Statistics released today (Tuesday) show claims for Winter Fuel Allowance jumped by 214,000 last year. More and more people over 80 are claiming the £300 higher allowance which had reached 3.3 million for the firsttime. Thenew figures mean the government will save even more money by abolishing it for all those not claiming pension credit, particularly from the very elderly.Figures released also show that those state pensioners living in EU countries who will continue to get the allowance amounted to 34,300. Over three quarters of them, some 26,000, live in the Republic of Ireland while those in Northern Ireland will get nothing. Qualifying for the allowance last year was this week which raises whether those claiming pension credit after this week will get the money for this winter.
Chancellor’s decision fuels racism when it is revealed her cuts are aimed at 95 per cent of white British born people
At last no doubt embarrassed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission which said the new Labour government was in breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty, the Treasury and the Department of Work and Pensions have had to release a breakdown of who is affected by the abolition of the winter fuel allowance.
Both departments used the mechanism of a Freedom of Information request made in August and chose a Friday afternoon to slip it out after Parliament had gone into recess to avoid too much publicity.
The clue is in what the announcement is called – an Equality statement – not an impact statement which was demanded by the House of Lords. In fact there has been no impact statement prepared at all even when Age UK said that about two million pensioners who will lose the annual £200 or £300 payment are just above the cut off point.
The document itself makes a claim that more men than women are affected by the change. But this is based on percentages not the actual figures. As it says: “This means that 85% (5.2m) of women receiving a Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) will lose out, compared to 91% (4.8m) of men. The reason for this is that women live longer than men and are more affected by the loss of the payment. The gender breakdown is 54% (6.1m) of those who received a WFP in GB in 2022/23 Female, and 46% (5.2m) Male.
The figures reveal that the older you are, the bigger the loss you make, partly because the payment for over 80s is £300 rather than £200 per household.
The statement says: ” Although a smaller proportion of those aged 80+ will lose out than those under 80, due to the higher rate of WFP from that age, older pensioners who are affected will be proportionally worse off financially as a consequence of the policy.”
This is still 2.7 million people in top of the 7.9 million aged 66 to 79 who lose out.
Then there is the effect on the disabled – those claiming attendance allowance and disability living allowance. Here 1.6 million lose out and they must be the most vulnerable to the cold.
So if you are woman, more elderly and disabled you are worse off. If you are all three it is catastrophic.
The government has made a lot of noise about the 880,000 people not claiming pensions credit who could qualify by applying and getting the winter fuel allowance. But the paper says despite all the noise ministers are only expecting another 100,000 to claim leaving 780,000 still going without it.
The figures for existing claimants for pension credit are interesting. The most successful claimants are men not women – despite men being in a minority. The least successful are couples and there is a nasty reason for this. Under the Tories rules were changed so that both people had to be aged 66 to get it. So if you had a man who was 66 married to a woman who was 62 you would be excluded from claiming it until the man was 70 and the woman 66. No wonder the take up is lower. And Labour haven’t changed the rules.
Finally there is an ethnic breakdown. In the UK among the general population 84 per cent of the people are white British and 16 per cent are from ethnic minorities. Among the pensioner population, 95 per cent are white British and only five per cent are from ethnic minorities. So Labour in this case has targeted anybody who was born here far more heavily than people who were not.
This may well explain why I am getting a backlash from readers of this blog who complain that the government is doing more for people who have just arrived here than the population who have worked here since they were 15. They think it is unfair.
Cheerleader for Nigel Farage?
So we have the extraordinary situation that Rachel Reeves is inadvertently becoming the cheerleader for Nigel Farage by providing him with a platform to say that British born people are being unfairly penalised.
Her policy among that generation may well drive them to support Reform because they have a grievance that only Labour has created and cannot be blamed on the Tories. This unfortunate situation aids racism and has more purchase with people than tales of a £22 billion black hole.
Then there are international repercussion. The last government was already in trouble with the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Discrimination against women and girls (CEDAW) in Geneva. Although we ratified it nearly 40 years ago when Lady Thatcher signed us up, we have not implemented in law many of the provisions. This is a new policy – even though it was done administratively – and the government has not tested the impact on women which is against the convention.
More close to home there could be a case for indirect discrimination against women because although the policy appears to be fair to all pensioners, women are again bearing the brunt of it.
Of course as I argued in a previous blog both Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer know that many pensioners will die before the 2029 general election so they won’t be here to vote. By implementing this cruel policy for those just above the cut off point they know many more will join them as they freeze in their homes this winter.
Lord Hunt of Wirral, chair of the Lords secondary legislation committee and a former energy minister under Lady Thatcher’s government Pic credit: Official Portrait House of Lords
UPDATE: Government got policy throughthe House of Commons by 348-228 on September 10. Tories, Lib Dems, Greens, Scot Nats, DUP, Alliance and Reformvoted against. Some 53 Labour MPs abstained, one Labour MP voted against.
SECOND UPDATE: A Conservative motion regretting themeans testing of the winter fuel allowance and the lack of transparency by Labourwas passed by 164 votes to 132 in the House of Lords on Wednesday evening. An attempt by a former Tory pensions minister,Baroness Altmann to annul thecut was heavily defeated.
Infected blood victims may also face further delay for compensation say peers
Peers have slammed the government’s planned means testing of this year’s £200 and a £300 winter fuel allowance for the over 80s which will leave 10.8 million out of 12.3 million pensioners with no money before Christmas.
The Lords secondary legislation committee – which scrutinises laws introduced by government by issuing new regulations which have to be approved by Parliament -is severely critical of the changes, the lack of information, the by passing of proper scrutiny by a government appointed advisory committee and lack of evidence of any research by the Department for Work and Pensions of the effect of the changes.
The committee represents a wide range of peers in the House from Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrat and crossbench peers Including former Labour minister, Tom Watson.
Peers see no need for the urgency to get the change into law by September 16. “We are unconvinced by the reasons given for the urgency attached to laying these Regulations and are particularly concerned that this both precludes appropriate scrutiny and creates issues with the practicalities of bringing in the change at short notice,” the report says.
baroness Altmann
The criticism comes as Baroness Ros Altmann, a former Tory pensions minister, has said she will move a fatal motion in the Lords next week , a drastic power rarely used, to block the government implementing it.
The report points out that winter fuel allowances will continue to be paid this year for people who quit the UK to live in an EU country before 2021. It is likely to be abolished after this year for people who moved to Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland.
The government are trying to mitigate its effect on the poorest pensioners by encouraging the 880,000 who are entitled to pension credit, to claim. To do this they have to fill in a 243 question form and if they have over £10,000 savings -including money hidden in their homes – get a reduced form of pension credit. So far there has been a five per cent increase in uptake according to the DWP.
The Lords are scathing about this situation.”We are concerned that the Regulations may cause potential inequalities between low income pensioners claiming benefits and low income pensioners not claiming benefits, and it is not clear whether DWP has assessed this risk,” says the report.
The campaign to attract more pension credit claimants is causing admin problems for the DWP with the result that other people due to get pension credit are facing a nine week delay in getting the money, the report reveals. So the government are penalising the poorest as a result of the campaign.
The report also reveals that those on Universal Credit or who live abroad may need to make a claim for the Winter Fuel Payment. The deadline for making a claim for 2024–25 is 31 March 2025, and claims can be made by post from 16 September 2024 or by phone from 10 October 2024.”
The report also highlights that all pensioners will be hit by the rise in energy prices and many more will start paying tax because of the freezing of personal tax allowances which will go on until 2028.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are both breaking traditional consultation and witholding information of the effect of the policy change from MPs and peers.
The report says: “All benefits regulations are required by law to be considered by the independent Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC). This is generally done in advance of the legislation being laid. In this case, the Minister has opted for the urgency provision that allows SSAC consideration to be retrospective. Since this might be perceived as bypassing SSAC scrutiny, we asked the DWP what, if any, effect an adverse report from that Committee would have after the Regulations have already come into effect. DWP responded that, in line with their legal duty, ministers would lay the report before Parliament, and should the report contain recommendations, lay a statement before Parliament alongside the report. It remains unclear what the practical impact of any statement might be on Regulations which will have already come into effect.“
Compensation for Infected Blood victims
Peers in the same report have slammed the government regulations permitting compensation payment to infected blood victims, promised with great fanfare by ministers.
The committee’s report said: ” We found the Explanatory Memorandum (EM) to the Regulations overly complex and technical, while lacking basic information about the policy such as how those infected can apply and from when, how long claims will take to be processed, when successful applicants can expect payments to be made, and the basis on which each claim will be assessed.”
The peers castigate the civil servants for not producing a report in simple, plain English and cast doubt on whether promises by the new government to start payment by Christmas will be fulfilled.
They also accuse the Cabinet Office of witholding information about the process.
“We are concerned that the Cabinet Office is withholding information on the impact and cost of the Regulations until after the time for Parliamentary scrutiny has passed, which is unacceptable and circumvents proper scrutiny of the Regulations. We have not been given a reason why the costs could not be published ahead of the budget. The House may wish to pursue the issue of costs further.”
The lesson from both the issues raised in this report is that this new government is not in control of Whitehall and allowing civil servants to evade proper scrutiny on the measures they are introducing. Either ministers are being inept in not following proper procedures or this is a deliberate decision not to provide MPs and peers with information allowing them to scrutinise the new government’s decisions.
Sir Keir Starmer says he is expecting to be the most unpopular Prime Minister of modern times. He is certainly knows how to go about it.
An alleged horse murder, police protection at a parish meeting and council office and notice board defaced with hated filled graffiti
You could not imagine a more bucolic English scene. Beautiful rolling Sussex countryside, white painted country cottages, a heritage steam railway running by the village and Bodiam Castle, an imposing moated medieval ruin dominating the valley.
But this quintessential sleepy English village hides some of the most vicious in fighting by former and sitting parish councillors and their friends involving hate filled Facebook posts, false allegations, dodgy contracts, one sided council investigations, favours for friends, while Sussex police and the Rother District Council try to pretend nothing is happening here.
If this was inner city London or Birmingham such battles would be factional or party political. But here it is not politics but rival personalities who either want to control events or who are convinced dirty business is afoot in secret meetings.
A Midsomer Murders village?
If there is a script for this story it could either be an Agatha Christie novel or an episode of Midsomer Murders. So far only a grazing horse has died, but given the tensions here one wonders whatever will happen next.
So how has this happened? The trigger for all this is a remarkable pot of gold given to this little village by the former Tory Cabinet minister Michael Gove. As levelling up secretary he approved a massive £1.4 million loan in 2019 to enable the parish council to purchase a former Blue Cross animal rescue centre so the village could use its ample green acres for community use.
There had been much consternation in the village when the Blue Cross decided to close and sell the site as the original land had been donated by a local farmer and it was a valued part of the village as well as providing much employment.
The parish council was united in wanting this centre. Before they bid to buy it former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney came to the village with the chief executive of the Blue X centre to see if it could be saved. He even offered to underwrite the cost but the organisation was determined to close it.
His earlier letter of support for the Blue X Centre before it closed is here:
The purchase of this 34 acre greenfield site has meant that all the residents face an extra parish council precept on top of their council tax to pay back a Public Loans Work Board loan backed by the Treasury for the next 50 years.
Horses looked after by Lauren Sapsted graze on the former Blue X site – known as St Francis Fields
The row emerged about what to do with the land once it was owned by the council. At the time when all was sweetness and light a proposal was drawn up by then councillor Penny Farmer with the aim of providing local facilities for local people with talk of a riding school, workshops and local people being allowed to graze their own horses and allowing a small number of new houses to rent to local people who couldn’t afford Sussex’s rocketing house prices. These would have been built on an ‘exception site’ basis and was limited to an initial build of six.
Then councillor Penny Farmer, who has an equine background was also asked to provide costings of how the stabling and grazing could be made to work so that government loan would be affordable while allowing public use and her costings were included in the proposal to the government, to help convince them to grant the loan. The proposal and map of the huge site is here–https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PJLomhPMtDrIGl3yNsnQofsjlJDopvPcRQcYpiIW_24/edit?pli=1
The first sign of things going wrong was when it was decided to hand over the running of the site to a non profit making Community Interest Company with a clause saying the directors could take profits from developments on the site and it was allowed to keep all the revenue from the site to spend as it saw fit.
The big issue with the CIC is that as a corporate body, it has cost the parish council more money than they have created or put back into the project. The Parish Council “grants” them £1500 a year, they use an office and storage space as well as land owned by the Parish Council rent free which the council could otherwise rent out and they have not achieved anything the Parish Council couldn’t have done itself despite not having “power of competence”. Last financial year – they got double the grant -two tranches of £1500. They also rent unknown land/buildings on the site to unknown people for £1460 a year – there is no record as to who or what this is all about at the Parish Council; it has never voted or agreed to this use. The latest accounts are here.
Pete Sargent
When it was set up it soon emerged that other councillors had different ideas and one in particular Pete Sargant, who chaired the council at the time and is still a member, was seen by opponents as the ” village Godfather figure”. He is a smooth talking man with a lot of friends in the village but rather like Macavity in the musical Cats it is his friends who do a lot of the arrangements. Macavity is not there.
Pete Sargent said: “Several of them stated that they would be interested in helping set up the CIC and so I called them all together and asked them if they would like to set up the company, which they duly did. They chose themselves.”
This is not entirely true. Judith O’ Connor, the chair was tipped for the post in advance while Carolyn Pierce, previously a councillor, who had worked on the Blue X rescue centre for 20 years, was denied a post when she requested one. It is said by Jon Streatfeild. a former chairman of the council ,that Sargent kept the book with the directorships to himself for six months until all the posts were filled, mainly to members and friends of his in the local Bonfire Society and the Village Hall Trust.
Later when one councillor, Ben Dallimore, in 2022 demanded to see the minutes kept at the parish council office, the then clerk to the council, Nicola Ideson, threatened to call the police, started messing up files and tried to make out she was being physically threatened and harassed and pushed him out of the office. He had the foresight to have recorded the conversation and when she complained he made it clear he had recorded it. In February 2023, she contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office to say that as a Parish Councillor, he had recorded her at work and she wanted a copy of the data. After some arguing back and forth with the ICO about the nature and purpose of the recording, he gave her an edited copy of the recording which only contained her information..
It soon emerged there was a reason for this secrecy. For instead of planning new community facilities the first thing that happened was an approach to a housing developer suggested by retired architect, Julian Luckett, partner of Judith O’Connor, who chairs the CIC and an administrator of the Northiam Facebook page.
Jennifer Owen Construction Ltd, a local firm, had already built expensive £500,000 four bedroomed detached homes in the village, and was contacted by Pete Sargent’. He said: “I contacted Mr Malcolm Edmonds, the MD of Jennifer Owen Construction Ltd to discuss possible options on part of a field to which they owned the access. This plot was less than one acre in size, so 3% of the total site rather than 33% as suggested. Initial contact was by email due to lockdown and so a site meeting was impossible. A year later when I was no longer a Councillor he made contact again. I forwarded their email to the new Chair of the Council and the Chair of the CIC, both of whom decided that they did not want to follow it up at that time.”
This turns out not be quite true. A memo from Georgina Jackson, a later parish clerk, reveals there was a secret meeting with the firm to develop one field where there was access and it was not to build cheaper rented homes for ordinary local people but expensive new homes.
Sargent had also written an internal report where other areas of the site could be considered as ‘brown field’ and therefore considered for development. This was in spite that he had given assurances, including in TV interviews and in emails to the government, that the proposed purchase of the site was to save it from development, as well as providing a community asset.
The development foundered because the firm discovered the homes would have to be marketed as leasehold because the parish owned the land and it would not get the best price. The firm was also worried it would have to go out to competitive tender and it could lose the contract. The company was not interested in developing the whole site, despite rumours to the contrary.
A fake Northiam Parish flyer was put out to worried residents about this when news leaked out.
The clerk took legal advice about this and was advised this would have been illegal if they had gone ahead and the parish council could have been prosecuted for breaking the terms of Gove’s loan.
But there was a much bigger row on the horizon that was to lead to nasty consequences for anyone who objected. During the pandemic a decision was made to lease 10 acres of the site to a horse trader, Lauren Sapsted, who would keep horses for wealthy owners, on the site, while at the same time blocking a local resident who wanted to graze her two horses on community owned land.Several other local horse owners were also turned away. The exclusivity clause in Sapsted’s lease meant that local residents were barred from using much of the site and none of the equine facilities including the sand schools, even though they were funding it through the council tax.
The deal only open to her was she would pay the parish £12,000 a year to lease the land and the parish council even agreed to pay half her £3000 legal costs and she would pay a small sum every month to repay the loan. It was renewable. The loan was not disclosed to the full council. It turned out that the deal could have been illegal because it broke procurement rules and a planning restriction by Rother District Council that forbade commercial activity on the land. Pete Sargent defends it as done during the pandemic and claims that 50:50 arrangement on legal fees is ” common practice”.
Events took an extraordinary turn when the lease came up for renewal . After her horse died Lauren Sapsted demanded the parish paid for security cameras to be put up on the land which costing £14,000 – more than the annual rent. The parish council demurred in drawing up such a contract but unknown to them Sue Schlesinger, chair of the parish council at that time and sister in law of the famous Hollywood director, John Schlesinger who made Midnight Cowboy, secretly made a separate contract granting this without telling the council after Lauren asked her to do it.
The security cameras never came and the shenanigans over the two contracts were too much for Lauren and she left 18 months later leaving the parish with no income and moved her business elsewhere. Sue Schlesinger resigned but has lately been re-elected to the council.
Entrance to Lauren’s Sapsted’s leased business
Lauren still claims her horse was murdered today and the two former councillors are to blame.
There was also a nasty consequence to all of this. When Lauren discovered Alice, a valuable pregnant horse, had been found dead, she was convinced it had been murdered in the night and blamed two councillors, Penny Farmer and Jon Streatfeild , a former chair of the council, for killing it because she had been erroneously told that they wanted to take over her business. Councillor Robert Maltby, a friend of Sargent, gave Lauren the report which he obtained from Sargent of Penny’s 2019 submission, which had originally been requested by Sargent, saying it was her current plan in 2022.
The murder allegation was not just village gossip it was put up on the Northiam and Nearby Facebook page by Lauren on the 16th May 2022.The site administrator, none other that CIC Director Judith O’Connor allowed this post to remain.
You can also see the shock of local people who now believed they were scumbags. Lauren called Sussex police asking them to open a murder investigation. They found no evidence. To do this the councillors -one of them a middle aged lady – would have got up in the dark middle of the night and tramped across fields. Two people questioned this. One, Ben Dallimore, a former councillor, was up in the middle of that night because he and his wife had a new baby. Their house is close to the field and they heard nothing. Another resident was surprised because if strangers were nearby, their dogs immediately start barking. They heard nothing either.
Jon Streatfeild – former chairman of Northiam Parish Council
Then the real harassment began. The parish managed to get sympathetic support from two top officials at Rother District Council to investigate then councillors Penny Farmer and Jon Streatfeild. Lorna Ford, chief executive, and Lisa Cooper, a monitoring officer, got a lawyer from Chichester District Council to prepare a report saying Streatfeild was guilty of leaking the confidential contract with Sapsted which revealed the arrangements for the lease and it was not in the public interest. They paid the lawyer £12,000 for the report but there are no records of their agreement or how much time was spent on the report which sounds highly irregular for a local authority. The finding contradicted later legal advice obtained by Jon Streatfeild that said the deal with Sapstead broke the law – so it was in the public interest for this to be released.
Separately when the police inquired about concerns brought by Jon Streatfeild about what was going on at Northiam, Lorna Ford sent emails to the police that everything was fine there.
Another report was commissioned by the parish council – at a cost of another £12,000 from an independent firm – which was skewed not to include any investigation into the relationship between the parish council and community interest company – which was central to the development and subject of concerns. This was prepared just before a public meeting in Northiam where Streatfeild and Farmer were treated as pariahs, including being spat at by people who believed they were horse murderers.
So bad was this meeting that at a future hustings meeting in the village last year Sussex Police arranged security to protect them – Penny Farmer , a former police officer, was so worried she did not attend.
Last year Streatfeild was defeated in the parish elections as most people believed the allegations. But he also had to put up with further stress. His front garden was sprayed with weedkiller, a parish noticeboard was covered in graffiti denouncing him, and two stalkers appeared to harass him at his place of work.
One, Michael Court was served with an adult ASBO by the police to keep good conduct for the next two years. Another Richard Smith, an ex policeman, came into the pub where he worked part time and denounced him in front of all the pub customers – obviously hoping he would get the sack. But this has not happened.
All these details of the harassment has been put to the police and the Rother District Council. The official statement from Sussex Police is completely defensive.
Rosie Ross, divisional commander at East Sussex police replied: “As a journalist you will know the rules around personal data and sharing of such data. This request is in the context of named individuals and actions we may have taken to either safeguard or sanctions used, as and such cannot be shared. Even if it were a Freedom of Information request, it would be exempt under s40 FOIA for these same reasons.”
We actually didn’t need to put in a request as we have seen the terms of the order against Michael Court and there were plenty of witnesses to the incidents.
Rother District Council was equally defensive.
A Rother District Council spokesperson said: “The district council has a duty to put in place arrangements to manage complaints against elected members for the town and parishes. We deal with all code of conduct complaints diligently and fairly in relation to all complainants, and we believe we have done so in this case.
“It would not be appropriate to comment in detail on individual code of conduct complaints as they are confidential.
“However, we have repeatedly advised Mr Streatfeild and others of the limited powers that Rother District Council has to become involved in matters relating to other councils, especially with regards to matters such as the Blue Cross Site. We have advised Mr Streatfeild how best to pursue those complaints via organisations which do have the power to intervene, including the police.”
Rother District Council have not investigated any complaints brought against Peter Sargent, even though he helped instigate the proposed development of the land after publicly stating that the loan was for a community asset, lent parish council money without the knowledge of other councillors to help cover Sapsted’s legal bills which is unlawful and brought a complaint for criminal damage on the site, on the very day that we visited it to research this article and witnessed no such criminal damage.
Again we have seen all the details involving the Rother District Council officers involved and have published this in the public interest.
One bizarre reaction from Sussex Police was to suggest the complaints went to the National Audit Office, the Parliamentary watchdog that scrutinises Whitehall. Since the abolition of the Audit Commission by the Tories, which did scrutinise parish councils as well as larger bodies, there is no body that has the power to regulate local government.
As a result the NAO said it could not conduct inquiries into parish councils like the now defunct Audit Commission. But Adeel Shah, the NAO’s FOI and Correspondence Officer gave Jon Streatfeild very useful advice. He said the answer was to go to the external auditor of the council and helpfully looked up who was responsible.
Now the external auditor, PKF Littlejohn LLP, based in London, is looking at Northiam Council following two separate complaints. One is from Penny Farmer, which is challenging the whole way the council is managing its budget and whether certain earmarked funds, such as for a sewer outlet, are being raided, and whether the parish could run out of money.
Ben Dallimore on holiday
Another is from Ben Dallimore, another former councillor, about how money has been promised to Wealden Traditional Construction Ltd for the design plans of the new Football Pavilion to be claimed back from S106 ( money given by builders Persimmon )held by Rother DC. The contract to build the new pavilion will be worth £300,000.
Now the main employee of this company is local villager John Cusden, who plays for Northiam Football Club. His application was supported by retired architect, Julian Luckett and Pete Sargent. Companies House records show that his own company, Wealden Design and Build Limited has just gone bust and is in the hands of a liquidator. The new company is registered at the same address in Rye that the old company recently moved to. It has one new director, Charles Dawson, but its website praises the work of John Cusden over the last 10 years when he was director of the bust company.
A letter from the external auditor has now raised 11 procedural issues that led to the granting of the money which the council must answer. It also discloses that the external auditors may have received more than two complaints.
Mr Dallimore is now facing the same treatment as meted out to Jon Streatfeild. He has been recording council meetings and did some filming after one was held in private. The council are now discussing with Rother District Council whether they can impose restrictions on his activities by imposing the equivalent of an adult ASBO.
Mr Sargent did not want to comment on these complaints. His case is that he is the victim of harassment not the other councillors. The only evidence we could find about this is that someone scratched on the council office that it was ” The Bank of Pete Sargent” – of which there is no evidence that he has ever taken money for himself.
We have done this long special report to illustrate what has happened to local government at parish pump level now there is no official scrutiny by national bodies and local media has disappeared in this part of East Sussex. The irony is the lack of scrutiny has led to people putting too much on the internet so there are a wealth of documents to stand up exactly what has been going on in Northiam.
Michael Gove has left the new Labour government plans to revive a smaller version of the Audit Commission to regulate local government again. The new government need to act not only to police the growing number of technical bankruptcies in big local councils but to ensure that smaller bodies don’t end up being run by cliques helping each other out. The police and bigger authorities are obviously not up to the job and the NAO has much bigger fish to fry in policing waste and dodgy deals in Whitehall.
1950s born women to face a quadruple whammy to their hopes over compensation, heating allowances, fuel bills and new taxes
Sir Keir Starmer in the Cabinet Room Pic credit: Gov Uk
In just 50 days of a new Labour government pensioners rather than the better off have been singled out to pay the price to balance the books of running the country.
They are the people who are often not in the best of health, have worked most of their life and most don’t go around rioting and throwing fireworks or bricks at the police.
So for Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves they are a soft target to save money, particularly if your object is to grow the economy.
Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer poses for a photograph following her appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street
To them the elderly are a burden. That is because they would find it difficult to have enough energy to start new businesses, expensive to look after since they are more likely to use the NHS, and the cost of pensions is the real big ticket item for the Department for Work and Pensions costing £125 billion a year – far outstripping any payments to other people. The total DWP annual pay out to people is £258.4 billion – so pensions are almost half the bill. Rachel Reeves will know all about this as her partner, Neil Joicey was finance director at the DWP.
If ministers are prepared to ignore that pensioners feel they have contributed to their pension and it is theirs by right, it would be rather convenient for the Treasury if they died sooner than later. Life expectancy is already stagnant and the new Starmer and Reeves measures could see it fall. Also pensioners were the last group who chose to vote Conservative rather than Labour at the general election, so it would be politically convenient with a five year government guaranteed by its large majority if many had died by 2029. The dead can’t vote.
Darren Jones Pic credit: ITN News
The justification for means testing the fuel allowance – worth up to £300 per pensioner household – put by Darren Jones, the new Chief secretary to Treasury, was that it was a blanket benefit costing £1.4 billion claimed by the rich and poor. True a 90 year wealthy woman living in Kensington might not miss it, but an average 66 year old man living in Blackpool and about to die a year after getting his pension, will.
But his argument could also be used to abolish the universal state pension- and for all I know is being discussed in the Treasury – since it goes to billionaires -as well as the poorest.
The cut off point to lose the fuel allowance is £218.25 a week for single pensioners and under £332.95 for couples. Some 880,000 earning less than this could apply for pension credit but the forms are daunting for this. I checked to qualify you have to answer up to 243 questions. Read it here.
Some of the questions are bizarre. Why would you have to tell the DWP for example, if you share your home, with another person, whether he or she has ever been in prison or held in custody at a police station? Why do you have to tell them whether they have ever had four weeks holiday outside the UK? If you have over £10,000 in savings you have to fill in an additional 31 questions on another form. You have to disclose all the money send original bank and building society savings books and reveal how much cash you hide at home. You are expected to fill in the form yourself, if you can’t expect a visit from a DWP civil servant demanding why you can’t. No wonder a lot of people are put off and Ed Miliband’s cheery suggestion you apply, appears to mean he hasn’t a clue how detailed the forms are.
The other outrageous thing is that any government proposing a change should do an impact assessment on what this will mean. This was ignored by Rachel Reeves- so keen was she to announce the cuts.
On top of this we now know, after the announcement from the regulator, Ofgem, that energy prices are going up 10 per cent from October adding an average £149 to people’s bills just as the £300 fuel allowance is being abolished. At the same time Labour pointedly did not agree to raising pensioners tax allowances so with the triple lock in place, to avoid the poorest pensioners with little or no extra pension in place starting to pay tax again.
Michael Shanks MP and junior energy minister
As for the 1950s born women the chance of any compensation – even the paltry sums of between £1000 and £2900 recommended by the Parliamentary Ombudsman — is getting dimmer by the day. A rather frank answer to a constituent from Michael Shanks, the new Labour MP for Rutherglen and junior energy minister, has revealed the Treasury has taken over deciding whether they get a penny.
He wrote:” My understanding is it is being looked at seriously by Treasury and DWP Ministers now they are in post and fresh discussions are taking place about what happens next.
He went on: “You may be disappointed we didn’t simply commit to compensation for all, but as we have discussed before, I think it is more complex than that and I’m not convinced a one size fits all approach is right, or a good use of public money. The PHSO has recommended £1-3,000 per person, costing up to £10bn. However, this would give compensation to women who did know about the change – around 43% of WASPI women according to the PHSO. We need to ensure that any compensation is fair, so that at such a difficult time for the country financially we are not paying out thousands of pounds of compensation to women who were well aware of the changes, and that we are not insulting those badly affected with a mere £1-3,000.”
I have looked at the PHSO report and couldn’t find a reference to this 43 per cent who knew. If this is true it means that over 1.5 million will get nothing even if the government decides some compensation is due.
Meanwhile the campaign by CEDAWinLAW goes on. Jocelynne Scutt, the former Australian judge, who headed an independent tribunal into the fate of 50s women who lost their pensions for six years, was handing in a letter following a petition signed by 37,000 at Number Ten Downing Street today to drive home to Sir Keir the strength of feeling over the discriminatory issue and the need for mediation with ministers. WASPI, which represent 186,000 of the 3.5 million affected say they will have a meeting with minsters next month.
Here’s a newly edited video of the visit by Jocelynne Scutt explaining the latest moves by CEDAWinLAW.
If you were thinking of complaining about your employer’s solicitor trying to force you to sign a NDA barring you from complaining to the police, another regulator, or ban you from making freedom of information (FOI) requests or subject access requests to your company or public body, you might as well not bother.
For new figures released this year following a request under the SRA’s voluntary Transparency Code (it is not signed up to FOI) reveals how miniscule the action over misused NDAs is taken by the SRA that polices over 167,000 practising solicitors.
Over the last four years, believe it or not, action has only been taken in less than FIVE cases where NDA’s are involved out of the 10,000 complaints about solicitors received by the SRA every year.
Figures released to David Change (he is on X @DavidChange12) where the sole complaint was about the misuse of Non Disclosure Agreements amount to just 41 over the last four years. Of these 13 were not investigated and there were fewer than five warning letters issued over the four year period, similar for letters of advice, and public and private rebukes. In some years the SRA was almost completely inactive. In 2023 it is issued just what looks like one public rebuke. For the first five months of this year it says it has had just one complaint and taken no action so far.
Sellafield
One of the complaints I know about involving a whistleblower in Sellafield, the nuclear waste site, the documents I have seen, show that solicitor Emma Mills, a partner in law firm DLA Piper, had tried to force the person to sign away his rights to make FOI and Subject Access Requests to Sellafield and withdraw a complaint to a regulatory authority about the company’s human resources department. The SRA replied to him that she had behaved correctly without it looks like bothering to investigate further. Yet the Information Commissioner’s Office told me that asking anybody to withdraw FOI’s or SAR’s was outside the law.
The SRA’s figures do contain a caveat. They did not check whether among cases whether the complaint against other activities by solicitors included a complaint about misusing NDA’s, so the figure could be higher. It was too expensive under FOI guidelines for them to check further.
The fact that there is a problem with the misuse of NDA’s is not disputed. A snapshot of the present situation was put together by the Legal Services Board and published this year.
Concealed illegal activity included harassment and discrimination
The report said: “Examples of alleged illegal activity reported by respondents as having been concealed by NDAs included unlawful harassment and discrimination (e.g., on the grounds of sex, race, disability and maternity), sexual assault and abuse, fraud and tax evasion. Many respondents reported NDAs being related to employment disputes. In defining misuse, some respondents questioned whether NDAs should ever be used to conceal misconduct, prevent a victim of wrongdoing from seeking support or reporting to regulatory or law enforcement bodies.”
The report was a snapshot – for example there was just one case cited involving the NHS – when certainly health trusts use them more widely to cover up scandals in the health service. It showed that many employees pushed to sign NDA’s, felt an imbalance of power between their knowledge of what they were signing and the company’s lawyers and were bullied into signing NDA’s. Others felt the firm did not care about their mental state or threatened them with facing an employment tribunal where the company’s lawyers would expose their failings.
There was also a mismatch between the fine words of the evidence given by the SRA to the Legal Services Board who showed they understood that lawyers did pressurise people to sign NDA’s and the actions it took when it received a complaint as shown by these statistics.
What this pointing to is a change in the law governing the issue of Non Disclosure Agreements which should be outlawed if they contain any reference to people losing rights given by Parliament to make FOI or subject access requests or complain to any regulatory authority including the police and HMRC.. What is clear from the Legal Services Board report is that many employees are totally unaware of their rights which can then be exploited by dodgy companies and irresponsible public authorities. As for the SRC this record of handling complaints is abysmal.
There appears to be growing evidence that the Solicitors Regulation Authority,(SRA), the body that regulates and upholds professional standards for lawyers, is inconsistent in its judgements, over sympathetic to lawyers, particularly from large firms, and is not regarded by the public and whistleblowers as protecting their interests.
I took up the treatment of two whistleblowers who separately complained to the SRA about lawyers acting for the Sellafield nuclear waste site and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) recently. . Both complaints were rejected by the SRA who said the lawyer had behaved correctly. Yet they raised serious questions about the use of Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) to crush people complaining to regulators and use Subject Access Requests and Freedom of Information requests to obtain information from public authorities.
alison McDermott
One, Alison McDermott, who lost a consultancy contract after exposing bullying at the nuclear plant, even asked her former MP, Philip Davies, to complain about her complaint to the SRA being used against her by lawyers in a costs hearing. The chief executive of the SRA, Paul Philip, rejected this and cited the NDA’s view that she had acted “‘vexatiously, abusively, disruptively or otherwise unreasonably’ in the way that her employment proceedings were conducted.” In fact both organisations lost most of their £40,000 claim against her.
She had previously complained about Deshpal Paneseer KC, a barrister from Old Square Chambers, representing the nuclear site, for the language he used against her saying she was a fundamental liar but got nowhere with this.
The costs claim included trying to get retrospectively the costs of a freedom of information request that Sellafield had granted. In fact there is no provision under the FOI Act for retrospective claims – the public authority has to decide within 20 working days of the application whether to grant it or not.
The second whistleblower – who I have not named – complained to the SRA about Emma Mills, a solicitor with DLA Piper, a proposed NDA ( this one known as a COT3) which demanded he withdraw all FOIs and Subject Access Requests and a complaint to a regulatory authority or face a £14,000 costs hearing despite withdrawing his case at an employment tribunal.
He wrote : “I am a Whistleblower acting in the public interest, and I regard the behaviour of Emma Mills and the Respondent as menaces and harassment, pushing me to accede unwillingly into signing a COT 3 contract which is not in my best interest, and under the threat of pursuing me for costs if I do not sign the COT3 contract.”
Again the SRA rejected this and again it is not lawful under the FOI Act as there is no provision in the Act for an organisation to ban a person using FOI. This was confirmed by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Inconsistences in judgements
The inconsistency is shown by a recent decision by the SRA over a similar case reported on Linked In by Loopline Media. The full article ishere. A law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe (UK) LLP had been employed by a German firm Payone, a Digital payments service firm, based in Frankfurt with employees in the UK. The report found the law firm had tried to impose a settlement with a whistleblower to withdraw a complaint to the Pensions Regulator that it was breaking UK law by failing to provide a proper pension for employees. The SRA found the law firm had could have negatively impacted the reputation of the legal profession. Orrick’s conduct was found to fall short of the SRA’s ethical standards, prompting regulatory interception by way of a letter of advice.
However the firm have been treated with kid gloves. No disciplinary action is being taken and a full report is not being published. The Pensions Regulator is investigating the firm.
Damning conclusion on the Legal Lens blog
The state of the SRA is thoroughly criticised in a post, also on Linked in, by John Barwell, a data privacy expert. In a damning blog, he points out multiple failures by the SRA. questioning whether a body funded by solicitors can really police solicitors. His damning conclusion is :
“The Solicitors Regulation Authority was established to protect the public and ensure that the legal profession operates with integrity. However, its track record shows that it is a regulator in name only, failing to achieve these goals. The mishandling of cases involving prominent law firms is not just an isolated failure—it is symptomatic of a regulator that has lost its way. Without significant reform, the SRA risks becoming an even more useless entity, incapable of holding the legal profession accountable. It is time for the SRA to step up, enforce its regulations consistently, and restore public confidence in its ability to regulate the legal profession effectively. Until then, it will remain a toothless watchdog, incapable of fulfilling its vital role in the justice system.”
I would add more thing – there is a question mark over its choice of solicitors to do its work – especially if you are a whistleblower in the NHS. The law firm which holds the contract is Capsticks, which also holds a major contract with the NHS to represent trusts. It is fiercely proactive in pursuing whistleblowers trying to expose patient safety concerns in the NHS and earns a substantial income – funded by the taxpayer – to represent trusts in these cases. If Capsticks is seen as bringing the profession into disrepute – a complainant may report them to the SRA only to find that Capsticks handles their cases. I know of one barrister who did spot what he thought was bad behaviour but he told me it was not worth going to the SRA about Capsticks since the SRA was their client.
I asked the SRA for a comment on my two cases last week but they have not released it yet. I will put it up when it arrives.
Please sign letter by whistleblower to Shabana Mahmood
Two years ago some 317 people agreed to sign a letter to Sir Keith Lindblom, senior president of the tribunals, calling for transcripts and recordings of employment tribunal cases to be made available.
Employment tribunals appeared to be one of the few legal proceedings where records were not kept and claimants and whistleblowers – often appearing as a litigant in person – were put at a big disadvantage against big corporate companies, NHS trusts, powerful public bodies like Sellafield, who employed expensive barristers, often using taxpayer’s money, to discredit employees and whistleblowers bringing cases against them.
The companies and public bodies could afford – unlike a litigant in person – to employ notetakers or paralegals – so they had their own records – so if a person appealed against a tribunal verdict – he or she was at a big disadvantage.
Within just seven days we had backing from well over 300 people – from a former economic adviser to No Ten Downing Street, Sir Adam Ridley, 80 medical consultants, numerous GPs, nurses, teachers, to a former deputy groundsman at the Chelsea Pensioners hospital, a lorry driver, an actor, writer and a poet. This suggests there is a wide ranging feeling that there is something wrong in the justice system.
Judge Barry Clarke, President of the Employment Tribunals in England and Wales
Barry Clarke, the head of the employment tribunals in England, responded to the letter by announcing, where possible, employment tribunal proceedings would be recorded, so they would be transcripts of the proceeding.
But now two years later this has proved to be a Pyrrhic victory – hence the need for a fresh letter. It has also reached an impasse with the top judges in the employment tribunal digging their heels in to prevent further change. Thus only an appeal to the Lord Chancellor can remove this obstacle.
What has happened is that where tribunals have recorded proceedings, obtaining a transcript, if a judge allows it, costs thousands of pounds, well beyond the means of most claimants.
Where there is no recording the only record of proceedings is the judge’s notes. Judges have jealously guarded releasing this to the public – but it is the only record a judge covering an appeal in the case will see.
First it took a considerable time for the judiciary to concede this was the official record – arguing it was a private and personal note. Now Barry Clarke has conceded this is an official record of the case but does not want this released to the claimant, the public or the press. This hardly fits with the image that Britain’s legal system is proud of its reputation for ” open justice.”
Alison McDermott
Alison McDermott, a whistleblower who challenged Sellafield over its toxic culture towards its employees, has drafted a letter to go to the Lord Chancellor. You can read her blog and the text of the letter here . All you have to do is text Yes to Alison if you want to sign.
Last time the strength of feeling of the need for change was very high. My blog on the campaign is here. It also lists the 317 who signed. This time Alison is not planning to publish all the names.
Westminster Confidential 