Tag Archives: news

Government commissioned research reveals whistleblowers have no faith in the system to protect them

Posted on by
Glum whistleblower at an Employment tribunal. Picture created through AI

A research report published this July by the new Labour government has painted a devastating picture of the failure of the culture of the whistleblower system in the United Kingdom.

The report, originally commissioned by the Tories under Rishi Sunak, and undertaken by researchers at Grant Thornton, one of the big accountancy firms, pulls no punches. It reveals how whistleblowers, whether in industry, the NHS and other public bodies, see a failure by the courts, employers, and even those appointed to help them, to protect them.

The sad news is the report, commissioned by the Department of Business and Trade, looks like remaining on the shelf – and the one improvement planned by the justice ministry could make matters worse. It plans to appoint 50 new employment tribunal judges to handle an increase in whistleblowing cases, among other issues, following the implementation of the new Employment Rights Act. For those who follow my blogs, they will know, they are more than often part of the problem, not the solution.

For a start whistleblowers found the terms used to describe whistleblowers as vague and confusing.

The report notes that terms like “reasonable belief,” “public interest,” and “worker” are seen as subjective, vague, inconsistent, and narrow, creating uncertainty about whether protections actually apply. One whistleblower expressed surprise when an Employment Tribunal decided their concerns didn’t meet legislative requirements despite their employer telling them they did.

The majority of whistleblower participants reported feeling victimized by their employer after blowing the whistle. The research found that many whistleblowers believed the framework doesn’t provide effective protection in practice. The “protection” offered is essentially just the right to seek redress after harm has already occurred, not proactive prevention of retaliation.

Multiple barriers for whistleblowers

Multiple barriers existed for whistleblowers when their case came before an employment tribunal. These included:

Resource imbalance: They lacked time, money, knowledge, and skills compared to their employers Mental toll: The process was described as complex, draining, and requiring resilience many didn’t have Evidential burden: Proving detriment was directly related to their disclosure was extremely challenging Delays: Tribunals experience significant delays

Time limits: Strict deadlines created additional barriers

Unfair treatment: Limited access to evidence and risks around non-disclosure agreements

Lack of trust: Many didn’t believe tribunals would be balanced or deliver meaningful

Nor did whistleblowers find people designated to help them such as regulators much good.

They found they could not protect them from detriments or victimisation. Some were conflicted particularly where there had been regulatory failure.

Several whistleblowers stated it was “not easy” to blow the whistle internally: They found:

  • Little faith in the process based on previous experience
  • Fear of retaliation after hearing stories from others
  • Restrictions from non-disclosure agreements
  • Conflicts of interest when those receiving reports were implicated
  • Lack of independence in investigations
  • Concerns not being properly investigated or addressed
  • No feedback or perceived remedies

The report describes the huge tolls on whistleblowers. At employment tribunals,phrases from whistleblowers included: public execution,exhausting, beyond difficult, miserable. complex, ardous, horrible and abusive, soul destroying,toxic and unsafe.

Litigants in person fared worse with descriptions that they were not treated respectfully by judges, lawyers and other parties and that they were not impartial.

Many stated they would not blow the whistle again due to negative experiences

Cases that involved international jurisdictions were even more complicated with slow co-operation from countries and regulators abroad.

The report makes suggestions for change. These are:

  • create a central body for whistleblowing
  • ongoing engagement and research to assess and monitor all aspects of the GB
    framework
  • efforts to improve effectiveness should be multifaceted and monitored
  • improved mental health support for individuals
  • legal advice and a degree of financial security while the claim progresses
  • consideration of disincentives and incentives, for example implementation of a United
    States style reward system

I contacted the ministry about the report:

A Government spokesperson said:

“The Employment Rights Bill will strengthen protections for whistleblowers reporting sexual harassment at work and extend time limits for bringing tribunal claims from three to six months.

“We are also fixing the employment tribunal system by ensuring more cases are resolved before reaching them and recruiting more Employment Judges.”

They said that didn’t regard the report’s conclusions as firm recommendations and many of the suggestions were outside the remit of the ministry.

The full report can be read here.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

You can donate by PayPal using the link below

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/865JAS3QJ3C

Exclusive: 50s women: Details revealed of the damning buried DWP report that derailed Pat McFadden

Posted on by
Pat McFadden, poses for a photograph following his appointment to Cabinet by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street

The 18 year old research report that derailed work and pension secretary Pat Mc Fadden and forced him to review his decision to pay nothing in compensation to 3.6 million 50s born women is a comprehensive and damning document. No wonder he didn’t go into details in his Parliamentary statement this week on what the Labour government then did not do to inform the women and the first cohort of men who faced a rise in the pension age.

The key finding by researchers on the exercise of sending 16 million letters with automatic pension forecasts was that it was a “ systematic failure to reach the target populations most in need of provision.”

The research is very thorough. It took over a year to do it. It involved covering 16 million letters. Researchers interviewed 11,690 people. It involved both the women in the target 50-59 age group and men aged 59-64. ( 2007 was the year it was revealed that both men and women faced the pension age going up to 66). But it also involved men and women aged 20-49 to see if they were aware of the pension changes.

The first fact discovered was that out of the 16 million letters sent out, staggeringly 11 million went unread.

The report said The APF ( automatic pension forecast) was least effective among those who most needed it:

  • Those with no pension knowledge: 16% readership
  • Those without pension provision: 25% readership
  • Younger people: 20-24% readership
  • Lower socioeconomic groups: 30% readership

This represents a systematic failure to reach the target populations most in need of intervention.

All the letters did was reinforce people better off people’s decision to take early action to safeguard themselves.

It said This suggests the APF largely reached people who would have acted anyway, providing little marginal benefit.

There was also a Self-Selection Bias.

Those who read the APF were systematically different:

  • 64% already had basic/good pension knowledge
  • 33% already had pension provision
  • Higher income and socioeconomic status

The APF appears to have reinforced existing advantages rather than closing gaps.

It concluded:” “This research provides rigorous evidence that mass information provision, while well-intentioned, has minimal impact on pension knowledge or retirement planning behaviour. The APF initiative reached 16 million people but meaningfully engaged only about 5 million, with measurable behavioural impact likely affecting fewer than 1-2 million.

It lays down three fundamental truths.

  1. Information Is Not Enough Knowledge deficits are not the primary barrier to retirement planning. The research shows that those with the greatest information needs were least likely to engage with information provided.
  2. Existing Advantages Compound The APF was most effective among those who already had pension knowledge, existing provision, higher incomes, and greater financial capability—reinforcing rather than reducing pension inequality.
  3. Behaviour Change Requires Architecture, Not Just Information The minimal difference between APF and control groups demonstrates that passive information provision cannot drive behaviour change for complex, long-term decisions like retirement plan.

The report did tell ministers what they should do and why it was needed – that included specifically targeting the groups who did not respond in the future and running a systematic campaign to raise awareness of the change. As the Parliamentary Ombudsman found the result was maladministration.

DWP in ministerial flux

The ministry at the time was in flux. The year 2007 saw Peter Hain replaced by John Hutton – now both peers – as work and pension secretaries. The minister responsible for pensions changed as well from Mike O’Brien ( long left Parliament and working as a lawyer) and Dame Rosie Winterton.

There was zilch coverage in the media about its findings – the Iraq War was raging at the time – and it is not clear whether the report was kept for internal use anyway.

What will the impact be? First Pat McFadden says the review would not necessarily lead to the government paying out compensation. Secondly it could affect the judicial review brought by WASPI on the failure to act on the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report and pay out compensation, as he said he had informed the high court about his decision to review the issue.

This could torpedo the hearing due on December 9 because judges may not want to hear the case if the minister says he is reviewing the situation.

As I have stated many times this would not have happened as CedawinLaw , the other main group campaigning for restitution for women, has said if they had applied instead for mediation and a court ruling to enforce it. But sadly WASPI has always refused to work with other groups wanting to create an impression in the media that they are the only people concerned about the issue.

Also the issue of past discrimination against these women as well as maladministration could have been included in the case. But Waspi do not seem to be bothered about this.

Not so transparent McFadden

There is one other issue to raise. Pat McFadden made a big issue of being transparent in his statement. But in fact he made it difficult for journalists to access this report. Normally when a minister makes a statement – and it will the case in the Budget – all the papers are available in the Vote Office to lobby journalists. In this case this paper was only available in the House of Commons library which can only be accessed by MPs. I would like to thank the anonymous MP who got me a copy.

Since then the library have allowed the report to be available to the public. The link is here.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

You can also donate via PayPal using the link below.

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/865JAS3QJ3C

Two damning reports from Parliamentary Ombudsman say Charity Commission failed complainants about sexual abuse

Posted on by

The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office today published two reports into the Charity Commission’s handling of separate sexual abuse cases following Parliament’s rare privilege decision last week – see my report here – to compel Paula Sussex, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, to release them in the face of the Commission starting legal action to stop or delay publication.

Both reports highlight the failure of the Charity Commission to implement some of its findings and the total dissatisfaction of the two complainants – Lara Hall, 37 and Damian Murray, who is 66. Both decided to waive their anonymity. I will be publishing a separate follow up story on Mr Murray’s case after he contacted me – particularly after the local media failed to cover it. It is a truly shocking story.

The two cases are different. Lara Hall’s case involves the sexual exploitation by a trustee of a UK charity where she acted as a whistleblower.

Damian Murray’s case involved historic sexual child abuse by a prominent figure in the local community which was concealed by the charity and the college where he worked.

Lara said:

“The Charity Commission’s repeated failures have caused me profound pain and ongoing injustice. Instead of holding a trustee to account for appalling sexual exploitation, it questioned my experience and forced me to relive my worst trauma. How can survivors feel safe reporting abuse if they think they will be treated like I have? 

“By trying to block Parliament from seeing the reports, the Commission attempted to avoid scrutiny – striking at the heart of accountability in our democracy. Even now, it refuses to accept responsibility or act to put things right.

“It is my hope that by bringing the reports to Parliament’s attention action will finally be taken. The Commission must urgently address safeguarding to protect vulnerable people. Right now, it is failing in its core duty.

“It is time for change, oversight, and accountability within the Charity Sector so what happened to me is never repeated. I call on Parliament to hold the Commission to account and restore public trust. People deserve to feel safe approaching charities, and they deserve a regulator that takes safeguarding seriously

Damian Murray said:“For over seven years the Charity Commission has refused to act upon my complaint about the concealment of child sexual abuse.

“The Charity Commission has doggedly resisted all efforts by me, and latterly the Parliamentary Ombudsman, to encourage it properly or promptly to discharge its statutory responsibilities, choosing rather to shield the charity and its Trustees from scrutiny and accountability.

“After much unnecessary time incurred due to this resistance, the Ombudsman’s report has now been laid in Parliament. I trust now that politicians will hold the Commission to account, where I as an ordinary UK citizen failed.

“By stark contrast with the Commission, I very much appreciate the careful, professional and empathetic way that the Ombudsman’s team have dealt with me and with the complex and consequential concerns I have raised.”

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman CEO, Rebecca Hilsenrath KC (Hon) said: 

“The Charity Commission indicated throughout our investigations that they did not agree with our findings.  They have not complied with the bulk of our recommendations, despite our best efforts and our willingness to work with them to ensure compliance.

“It is important that the Commission provides a full apology for their failings and reassures Lara and Damian that they will put things right by complying completely with our recommendations. They have not done this so far. 

“Our report has now been laid in the House of Commons, following the intervention of Parliament last week. The Commission had prevented us from doing so by bringing legal proceedings. We act on behalf of Parliament to hold Government and other national bodies to account for failures, and we have a responsibility to make Parliament aware of cases of non-compliance. I am pleased that Parliament has taken an interest in these cases and has given us the opportunity to bring them to the attention of the House so that it can intervene.

“The purpose of our investigations is always to encourage learning and service improvements. If an organisation looks at what went wrong, it will be able to stop the same mistake from happening again.”

The Charity Commission released a statement criticising the action of Parliament to order publication of the reports.

A spokesperson said: “We have long accepted that there are genuine and important lessons for the Commission to learn from these two sensitive cases, principally in the way in which we communicate with complainants, and we have made improvements to our processes as a result. We have previously apologised to both complainants.

The Commission undertook detailed reviews in each case, as set out by the Ombudsman, and concluded that the overall outcome in each case was sound. In the case of Ms Hall, we had already issued an official warning to the charity concerned. 

But it is our view that by making the decision that we did not comply with certain recommendations in its reports, the Ombudsman has misunderstood our remit and overstepped its role, meaning that its decision making was unlawful.

We respect the work and authority of the Ombudsman, but it is vital that we, in turn, are enabled to do the job that Parliament set us. 

We have worked hard to seek to resolve the matter with the Ombudsman directly, but this has not proven possible. For that reason, we have brought legal action at the High Court. 

We have not asked the court to block the laying of any report before Parliament. We did, though, ask the Parliamentary committee to delay considering the reports to allow the courts to give judgment on our own and the Ombudsman’s statutory remits first.”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

You can also donate via PayPal The link is:

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/865JAS3QJ3CGQ

Institutional Corruption in Employment Tribunals: Dr Chris Day’s damning letter to top judge

Posted on by
Lord Fairley

Veteran NHS whistleblower campaigner, Dr Chris Day, has written a damning letter to Lord Fairley, President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, accusing the system of “Institutional Corruption” in the way it has handled his case.

Dr Day, who has just lost an appeal case heard by employment appeal judge Sheldon, compared the way both the employment appeal court and the previous employment tribunal handled the proceedings to the verdict in the infamous Daniel Morgan murder case which has never been solved after a trial of suspects collapsed.

The way this murder was handled by the Metropolitan police led the independent panel to rule: ““Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of an organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit. In the Panel’s view, this constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”

Dr Day has emerged bloodied but not unbowed from a judgment that rejected all the detriments he claimed and was surprisingly unconcerned about the defendants Lewisham and Greenwich Health Trust’s chief executive lying on oath about a board meeting and its deputy communications office, Mr Cocke, destroying 90,000 emails that could have been useful to his case during the hearing. The worst the judgment could say was this was ” troubling.” Given this centred on his whistleblowing about the avoidable deaths of two patients in Woolwich hospital’s intensive care unit, which the trust has always tried to deny, this is a remarkably tame comment.

What was particularly hurtful to Dr Day is that at the appeal hearing he was accused in open court of lying about cost threats. He had been clear that he was forced at one stage to try to settle his case because he was told by his barrister that he would face a proposed application from the NHS for £500,000. See my report on his wife’s evidence here.

Effectively he was being called a liar by saying this had happened. Instead there is copious evidence that it did happen.

As he says in his letter: “At my most recent hearing, Mr Justice Sheldon explicitly stated in front of public observers that I was “lying” about being threatened for costs. He did this in circumstances when he knew my belief in cost threats was robustly grounded on written material from by former barrister Chris Milsom. He also knew that this material was enough to convince 2 MPs, the Telegraph and Financial Times that I had been threatened for costs. Accusing me of lying about cost threats in these circumstances was nothing more than a cheap smear to make me look like a liar in public.”

Or as he wrote earlier: “Dishonest or deluded whistleblowers don’t tend to have the support of former health ministers, senior doctors and the BMA to fund a KC.”

Also there is ample evidence in reports by lawyers that attempts to put costs on whistleblowers are commonplace. Indeed some lawyers moan they can’t get enough of them.

Dt Chris Day

His complaint about ” institutional corruption ” is not directed at individual judges but at the legal system where lawyers socialise with each other and don’t want to see a colleague’s reputation or career damaged by having to admit they got it wrong.

As he says in his letter: “My complaint is not directed solely at individual judges but at the institutional handling of this matter. The EAT has placed judges in an impossible position: adjudicating on issues that, if determined on the evidence, would have serious implications for people with whom they admit to having ongoing professional or social relationships including being connected on social media.
“This is precisely the type of reputational self-protection identified as “institutional corruption” in the
Daniel Morgan inquiry. I am not expecting you or the EAT to do anything about this but want to record
my position and the fact that it has been put to you as EAT president. You will note 2 MPs have called
for a public inquiry into this case.”

The full letter is on the internet here. His account of the case on Linked In is on https://lnkd.in/dZuKkTFG.

My view from covering a number of tribunals- both involving whistleblower doctors, nurses and in the world of industry and the arts – is that lawyers are getting too cosy and comfortable with each other. Add to this the loss of media interest in all but the most lurid of court cases, there are precious few journalists left to observe what is happening in the courts.

All this is to the detriment of the ordinary member of the public when they fight their case. Arraigned against them is a club that knows how to fix the outcome. And this is destroying the principle of open justice and why we need radical reform of both the employment tribunal and county court system.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Pay via Paypal. Use link below.

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/865JAS3QJ3CGQ

Exclusive: Hundreds of low paid NHS workers cheated out of their rightful pensions in hospital trust blunder

Posted on by
St Helier Hospital

The trust running St Helier and Epsom hospitals in South London and Surrey has admitted it has deprived hundreds of its lowest paid workers their rightful NHS pensions for up to seven years due to a major blunder by its management in signing them up to the wrong scheme.

A letter sent out two weeks ago to catering staff, porters, delivery and transport drivers and cleaners admits it made ” a significant error” when it took the workers back in house in 2018 and 2021 from private contractors.

The move at the time was welcomed by staff as it gave the lowest paid staff higher pay than the going rate by private firms.

It has now emerged that instead of automatically signing staff up to the NHS pension scheme the workers were signed up to an inferior government backed workplace pension scheme, the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST).This pension scheme is aimed at small businesses as well as large private employers.

The letter says that benefits and contributions to the NHS pension scheme are higher.

The trust now part of the St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Trust employs 5000 staff in the two hospitals – a sizeable number will be low paid staff. The trust will have to compensate workers for this error and has called in the Government Actuary Department to help estimate the scale of the problem which could cost several million pounds at a time when the NHS is squeezed in trying to bring down waiting lists.

The letter also reveals that the new trust has ordered a review of all staff contracts, pay and conditions as a result of the error. It now appears that there are differences between staff doing the same jobs with some receiving extra days leave than others and others on different pay rates.

There is also a suggestion of racism over Sunday working for low paid workers One rate seems to apply for many people from black and ethnic minority workers of £13.86 an hour while Agenda for Change workers, who are mainly white, get £26.31 an hour.

There appears to be a high level of dissatisfaction among lower paid workers with a ballot result for strike action for porters and cleaning staff by their union, the United Voices of the World, just announced of 98 per cent wanting to go on strike. This suggests workers are very unhappy working there.

The trust has one of the highest paid chief executives in the country, Jacqueline Totterdell, who gets £340,000 a year. She and her predecessor, Daniel Elkeles, now chief executive of NHS Providers, were in charge when these errors were made. Jacqueline Totterdell is planning to step down as the NHS faces a big reorganisation under the health secretary, Wes Streeting.

The letter is here:

Letter sent to staff
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Yet another potentially dangerous leak at Sellafield nuclear waste plant

Posted on by
The giant Sellafield site

The Sunday Mirror reports today of yet another potentially serious leak affecting worker safety at Sellafield which was not publicly released two years ago.

A whistleblower told the paper that an elevated level of nitrogen which can cause asphyxiation was released in the most dangerous building on the site – the Magnox nuclear storage facility which is also leaking contaminated water into the ground.

As I reported in Byline Times last month the 100 year clean up is already 13 years behind schedule and £20 billion over budget and its own nuclear safety experts say is becoming increasingly unsafe. The article is here.

What is disturbing is that the whistleblower told the newspaper. “It was most serious because it could have killed somebody. The whole point of having all these safety procedures is to stop people breathing in inert gas, so we can evacuate before there’s a chance of breathing it in.”

The source said the leak in May 2023 was raised as an incident report and “was of a level that needed to be escalated”. But it was not escalated, according to the whistleblower, who added that “no lessons were learned”.

The source said: “There is no confidence or trust in the senior management now. We are dealing with nuclear waste and people are afraid to speak up. The problem is that people are being victimised if they report safety issues.

“Or they are escalated to managers who then try to cover them up or sweep them under the carpet. And that is a really dangerous culture in a place like Sellafield.”

This new disclosure just comes after a report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee that was highly critical of the management at Sellafield and the oversight of the dangerous site by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. It was also highlighted safety issues as the buildings reach the end end of their life span and MPs were sceptical of claims by the senior management that relations with staff are improving and a toxic culture of bullying and harassment had been stopped.

Officially Sellafield told the paper:”This was reported and investigated swiftly and thoroughly. Our regulator was informed in line with established protocols,” they said. “Our Safecall system remains independent providing a safe and confidential reporting system for the whole of the NDA group.

“Whistleblowers are respected, protected, and valued and we actively encourage employees to report matters of concern. Without exception, issues raised are taken seriously, investigated appropriately, and treated confidentially. We strongly advise anyone with a concern about a safety event or investigation to report it so we can act on it.”

They added that during routine testing of a nitrogen delivery system in the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo in 2023, a control valve was opened causing a ‘brief increase in flow and pressure of nitrogen’.

‌ The paper reports that Ex-Sellafield HR consultant Alison McDermott raised safety concerns in an employment tribunal in 2021. The management ended and her contract and spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to undermine her concerns at employment tribunals.

Alison McDermott

Alison, who lives near Ilkley, West Yorks, said: “In my experience, leaders cover up problems and lash out at people who speak out. That’s a terrifying state of affairs at a nuclear site. In my 30 years in HR it’s the most secretive, punitive toxic culture I’ve ever experienced.”

To my mind it suggests that Sellafield still has a very long way to go to convince Parliament and the public that they are handling safety issues properly at this plant.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Equality and Human Rights Commission hides findings on Hilsenrath’s breach of Covid lockdown

Posted on by
Rebecca Hilsenrath

The EHRC has refused to release the findings of an investigation into the huge breach of the Covid lockdown rules during the pandemic by Rebecca Hilsenrath, now chief executive of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office.

The decision is in contravention of a ruling by John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, who ruled that Mark Benney , who put in the request to his office ,was entitled to answers about the finding of the report but not allowed to see it himself.

The EHRC has confirmed that a report was completed at the time Rebecca Hilsenrath, then its chief exceutive, was suspended by the EHRC as a precautionary measure. She then suddenly resigned only to get a senior job at the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s office almost immediately.

Her breach of Covid rules involved her traveling from her North London home to her country cottage in North Wales where her children also joined her -presumably also in breach of the rules – to spend their Christmas holiday together. She has four children. It was exposed in The Times newspaper.

Her holiday cottage in North Wales

Baroness Falkner, a crossbench peer and the chair of the EHRC, has used the same argument it deployed unsuccessfully to say that it would not answer questions about the report to protect Rebecca Hilsenrath’s privacy to refuse to publish the finding of the report.

Official Portrait of Baroness Falkner

She has decided not to appeal the decision but Mark Benney has put in his own appeal. It includes the words;” the Commissioner has erred in failing to consider whether the report and supporting documentation are capable of appropriate redaction in order to remove any special category data. Finally, it also follows that material within the report and supporting documentation that is neither personal data nor special category data is properly disclosable according to the overarching logic of the inDecision Notice.”

In my opinion this decision to hide the finding of a report about Rebecca Hilsenrath’s breach of the Covid rules is totally wrong. It may be five years ago but the lockdown meant tens of thousands of people could not move around the country, make trips like hers to celebrate Christmas and were not even able to visit relatives dying in hospitals all over the country.

In my opinion there appears to be a certain class of people who are arrogant enough to think that they are above rules that everybody else in the country is expected to obey. These people are often protected by friends in powerful positions to avoid the consequences that other less privileged people have to suffer from breaking the rules. I am not saying in this particular case this is necessarily so but the failure of public organisations to come clean about the facts in this case can only add to further speculation.

Incidently the Parliamentary Ombudsman website is still silent on any new cases and no date has been fixed yet for the new Ombudsman, Paula Sussex, to join it.

Rebecca Hilsenrath has broken her silence from the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office in a YouTube video on mental health put out by the Ombudsman’s Association on Leadership, Listening and Making Mistakes dealing with mental health issues. She frankly discloses that she suffered four bouts of post natal depression when she had her children and members of her family have suffered mental health problems so she is sympathetic about mentally ill people who are being badly treated by the NHS and other organisations. See the interview below.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Winter Fuel Allowance: Rachel Reeves relents on a policy Labour should never have done in the first place

Posted on by
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

Last year the biggest hit on this blog was when I condemned the decision by Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to abolish the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners except the poorest on pension credit. The blog went viral and currently stands at 188,400 with 129 comments.

The decision – one of the first by an incoming Labour government – was inept, stupid, ill thought out, and rushed – and showed that the Labour government was completely out of touch with its base and its reputation for helping the poorest.

There was a decent case for restricting the payment to the wealthiest members of society who did not need help with their fuel bills. But by setting the figure so low as £11,300 to get it and trying to get people to claim pension credit – which has been a policy failure for years – this was a serious own goal.

The decision to use regulations to do this was attacked by the House of Lords statutory instruments committee – when they examined the detail – and ministers by passed their own benefits advisory committee, the Social Security Advisory Committee, on the flimsiest excuse that they didn’t have time to do this to make sure it could be implemented as an emergency. The committee itself when it finally got to discuss the regulations pointed out it was perfectly capable to look at it at an emergency session. It did this when the last government introduced massive social security changes to cope with lockdown during the pandemic.

The optics also looked bad for any politician. Claiming they had found a huge black hole in government finances it looked as though the first people who would plug the gap were pensioners, many of them surviving on incomes less than £20,000 a year. Pensioners and the disabled also need warm homes in winter probably more than any other people and the government’s claim it was implementing the triple lock to raise pensions was no use in the winter. It would not be paid until the spring when temperatures begin to rise and some would be scrimping and saving to try and keep warm before receiving an extra penny.

The result came back to bite Labour in the spring council elections and Parliamentary by-election in Runcorn, when voters dumped Labour in droves turning to Reform, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats instead.

Labour MPs and activists found this was one of the most cited reasons why people turned against them during the election. As a result Reform could capitalise by gaining control of a swarth of county councils and some mayoralties. The Conservatives were still not trusted by people after their 14 years in government, but to be fair to them they never proposed to cut the winter fuel allowance in the first place.

Luckily for Labour it is four years to the next general election so there is a chance it might be forgotten how stupid they were after four winters. And the mechanism they have proposed to pay the allowance back to nine million pensioners is fair with those earning £35,000 or more having to pay back the money in their annual tax return. The big question is why they didn’t do this in the first place.

The overall policy will still save £450m versus the universal system. But £1.25bn of the £1.7bn projected saving when this policy was announced is gone. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was claiming she couldn’t have done this when the government came into power because of the state of the finances, but can now because the situation has improved. She will have to explain this big change in her statement to MPs this week.

In my view the government overall has lost a lot of support by targeting pensioners not only in this way but also in the way it has treated 50swomen who had to wait six years for their pension by completely rejecting any compensation for them and ruling out mediation. I am sceptical that the WASPI campaign will get anywhere by going to court to try and revive the now rejected Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report on partial maladministration.

The issue was always discrimination as well as maladministration and the Ombudsman’s report was a very tepid solution for those who lost tens of thousands of pounds.

And ministers are being dilatory in paying out money to HIV contaminated blood victims and those swindled by the Post Office computer scam. All these affect many in the same age group.

The government has got a lot to do to regain popularity to get a second term in office, but this U turn on the winter fuel allowance is only a start.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Judge Lancaster’s dismissal of top cardiologist’s safety concerns helped health trust cover up heart patient deaths

Posted on by

Judge Lancaster – the same judge who vilified the now vindicated Alison McDermott- a Sellafield whistleblower over bullying and nuclear safety issues

Judge Philip Lancaster – the controversial employment judge – already facing 16 complaints – nearly all from women – about his handling of their tribunal cases – has now been revealed as having helped a health trust to cover up patient deaths.

An investigation by Michael Buchanan, the BBC’s social affairs correspondent, released yesterday revealed that police are investigating heart patient deaths at Castle Hill Hospital near Hull. His full report which contains disturbing treatment of patients and a “cover up” of the circumstances of their deaths from relatives is here.

The employment tribunal case heard by Judge Lancaster centred around the safety of a procedure called Trans-Catheter-Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) – a keyhole surgery method to replace a defective aortic valve in the heart to predominately elderly patients,

The case had been bought against Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust by consultant cardiologist Dr Thanjavur Bragadeesh, then clinical director of the hospital’s cardiology department, because he had raised safety concerns about the implementation of the procedure which had led to patients deaths.

Dr Bragadeesh

He had first raised the issue in 2020 to little effect and took the trust to the tribunal as a whistleblower in 2023. In fact he was demoted following raising the issues.

Ranged against him were the trust’s chief medical officer, Dr Makani Purva and three consultant colleagues, Dr.Joseph John, Dr Kumar Chelliah and Dr Manish Ramlall.

He brought 29 claims of detriment and 13 protective disclosures. All detriment claims were dismissed by Judge Lancaster as either being out of time or failed claims which were legally irrelevant.

As a result it was never publicly revealed until yesterday by the BBC that at least 11 patients died following procedural failures, with some death certificates failing to mention the surgery at all. Families were never told the truth. Independent reviews confirmed catastrophic decision-making and a mortality rate three times the national average.

Despite Dr. Bragadeesh’s concerns being validated by external reviews, including those by the Royal College of Physicians, the tribunal did not adequately engage with this substantive evidence. The failure to consider corroborative findings from reputable bodies suggests a potential bias in favour of the employer and a reluctance to hold the institution accountable.

Certainly the Judge Lancaster’s judgement reflects this highlighting similar omissions and gas lighting of whistleblowers as seen in other judgements – notably Judge Tony Hyams Parish ignoring the General Medical Council’s revalidation of whistleblower Dr Usha Prasad, then a cardiologist at Epsom and St Helier Trust and the avoidable death of a heart patient. And Dr Bragadeesh is described as having a ” bullying and undermining attitude” to other consultants – just as Dr Martyn Pitman, the obstetrician, who raised patient safety issues in the maternity services at Hampshire Hospitals NHS trust, was portrayed when he lost his tribunal case.

Alison McDermott

Yesterday also saw the damning findings of the Commons Public Accounts committee on Sellafield which showed that Sellafield had paid out £377,000 to staff to end labour disputes and had issued 16 non disclosure agreements to staff to cover up complaints. This vindicated Alison McDermott’s portrayal of the place at risk over nuclear safety and a bullying culture.

Still Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority are using the findings of Judge Lancaster’s flawed judgements to gaslight her.

In a joint public statement they said: “This case has been thoroughly litigated through an Employment Tribunal, Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) and the Court of Appeal. It was found that the claims made against Sellafield Ltd in this case were entirely without substance, and there was no basis for claims against the NDA.”

Try telling that to the MPs who wrote the report on Sellafield who say they are not convinced by claims that everything is OK or to the Department for Energy who admonished both organisations and said they must crack down on bullying.

There is a much wider issue to all of this. It is the question of the public accountability. Judge Lancaster is being protected by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office. Despite a growing pile of complaints from women and from Dr Bragadeesh about his behaviour at tribunal hearings, it refuses to act on any of them. It is also fighting the Information Commissioner to prevent the public and press being able to put in any freedom of information requests.

By doing so they risk bringing the judicial system into disrepute and in my view they lack a moral compass.

If they continue to do this, they are acting as a party to suppressing patient safety in the National Health Service and in the case of Sellafield, because it is such a contaminated and dangerous place, putting the general public at risk.

Baroness Sue Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, and Shabana Mahmood, the Lord Chancellor, who both receive advice from the JCIO, should be wary about ignoring these developments, because at some stage they are going to come back and bite them.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Information Commissioner orders EHRC to provide answers over Covid breach by former chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath

Posted on by
Rebecca Hilsenrath

NEW: Since this post was published I have learned that Rebecca Hilsenrath has been awarded an honorary KC and been appointed a member of the Civil Justice Council, chaired by the Master of the Rolls,Sir Geoffrey Vos. She is responsible for advising the judiciary on the use of alternative dispute resolution, where disputes are settled outside the courts. Ironically this would include the demand from CEDAWinLAW to solve the dispute over compensation for 50swomen pensioners which ministers oppose. She was and still is chief executive of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office when the former ombudsman ,Robert Behrens, recommended compensation for partial maladministration by the DWP. It would be curious to know what her position will be on this if this ever came up.

John Edwards, the Information commissioner, has ruled that the Equality and Human Rights Commission must answer what action it took when it was revealed that its former chief executive, breached Covid rules at the height of the pandemic by driving from north London to her holiday cottage in Wales for a family Christmas in 2020.

The decision is a partial victory for Mark Benny, a dogged campaigner, who sought answers to what action it took when it became publicly known through an article in The Times that she had driven hundreds of miles when there was a ban on any long distance travel as part of the national lockdown.

But the information commissioner has decided not to release a report of an EHRC investigation or correspondence from her because it goes into her private life and might cause unwanted distress.

Rebecca Hilsenrath’s Welsh holiday cottage

However his ruling is significant for a number of reasons. He has had to weigh up public interest in this case versus a person’s right to privacy. And he has come down very firmly that there is a public interest case about how senior public figures conducted themselves during the pandemic. He also ruled that public bodies cannot, as the EHRC did, impose a blanket ban under the privacy section of the Freedom of Information Act, to refuse to confirm or deny anything because it involves personal data.

This could have wider implications since public bodies use this technique where there are controversial appointments or resignations to refuse to provide information because itinvolves personal data

John Edwards, Information Commissioner

Rebecca Hilsenrath’s case was particularly controversial because she resigned her chief executive’s job at EHRC only to be parachuted into a top position at the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office where since became Interim Ombudsman and chief executive, an equivalent or even better status than she had at the EHRC.

Extraordinarily when Mark Benny pressed the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office on what they knew or whether they took into account of her Covid breach during her appointment, the office said it had lost the papers on her appointment process.

So now the EHRC will have to answer his questions within 30 days or as the Commissioner says in his report “failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.”
The questions he has asked include whether there was a proper investigation into the breach, whether it was completed and what was the outcome. He also wants to know whether she was suspended by the EHRC or put on gardening leave and whether she was dismissed or decided to resign.

All the public had at the time was a terse statement by the EHRC to the press. It said:

“The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed.
“She has apologised for this error of judgement,” said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
“I will establish all the facts before deciding if any further action is
required.”

Nothing has been heard of this since and it is now known whether it came up again when she was interviewed to be Interim Ombudsman last year.

What the ruling by the Information Commissioner does is say that Mark Benney’s request was legitimate and it was necessary for the information to be released. But he thought this could be done through his questions and it was not a legitimate interest to release the full report because it contained details of her private life.

Interestingly he thought it might throw some more light on what happened at the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office. He said “he considers that disclosure of the requested
information would allow further scrutiny of that process.”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00