davidhencke

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Can Whitehall promote innovation, efficiency and AI technology to help overcome the crisis in providing public services?

Gareth Davies, head of the National Audit Office Head of the National Audit Office raises pertinent questions about the future direction of Whitehall in annual speech Anybody reading the latest tranche of reports from the National Audit Office and the Commons Public Accounts Committee could be forgiven for thinking the UK is living in a dystopian world. Indeed fiction writers could use their…

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Ministry slammed by auditors for not getting correct Parliamentary approval for paying out Post Office victims

Parliament’s watchdog, the National Audit Office, has qualified last year’s annual accounts of the Department for Business and Trade, for failing to providing accurate estimates of the money needed to compensate the Post Office victims of the Horizon scandal and overspending its budget by over £200m. The disclosure is the latest blunder in the handling of the scandal where hundreds of…

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My blog in 2024: Over 358,000 hits with a huge interest in pensioner issues and whistleblower injustice

Hits on my blog jumped from 219,000 in 2023 to over 358,000 last year. This will be an underestimate because it does not include thousands of additional hits on Linked In, particularly where I highlighted bad practices in employment tribunals and hideous unjust treatment of whistleblowers by NHS trusts and other state and private organisations including Sellafield and a Network Rail…

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The tragic death of a talented and hard working ITV news editor and the dramatic inquest that fell short of providing answers

Teresa McMahon Pic credit Linked In Coroner Mary Hassell now facing bereaved members of two families unhappy about the way she conducts inquests Teresa McMahon was a well liked news editor for ITV’s Granada Reports who had a first class honours degree in journalism and was based in Salford. From humble beginnings she was rated by colleagues as ” a highly competent news editor, who had worked on…

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Jocelynne Scutt leads charge for CEDAWinLAW at APPG on 50s women pensions

Jocelynne Scutt The All Party Parliamentary Group on 50swomen pensions finally heard from CEDAWinLaw about what they want to see the Government do about responding to compensation for the 50s women deprived of their pensions for six years. Until this month the only organisation allowed to approach the group were WASPI and their lobbyists Higgerson Strategy. The meeting was in private. An…

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How Claire McLaughlan got promoted to review Lucy Letby in 2016 two years after the NHS was told she had to apologise for distorting whistleblower Dr Chris Day views in a major health trust investigation

Claire McLaughlan Her role in the Lucy Letby case comes out in a savage cross examination at the Thirlwall inquiry Claire McLaughlan may not be nationally known but has great influence in the NHS. She has become the “go to” person when health trusts want to deal with what they see as troublesome doctors raising inconvenient issues such as patient safety and helping trusts to discredit…

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Trump re-election leads to Americans to flee their country for Europe and the UK

Donald Trump; Pic Credit: The Trump Organisation website Donald Trump plans the biggest deportation of illegals ever seen in American history – accusing them of being criminals, mentally unstable, drug dealers and even eating people’s pets. But like every political policy there are always unintended consequences. And one of them has been building up since 2020 ever since the notorious storming…

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Sexual harassment at work to be treated as a whistleblower complaint under new employment law

But no answers from the ministry on plans to cost and scope the establishment of an Office of the Whistleblower The Department for Business and Trade is changing the law to strengthen the right of people to report sexual harassment at work by making it a protective disclosure under whistleblowing legislation. Bizarrely this measure was missed by mainstream media when the bill was published last…

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Judge reserves judgement on whether a top legal firm should pay wasted costs for hiding documents that removed 54,000 English doctors from the UK's legal whistleblowing protection in the Public Interest Disclosure Act

Dr Chris Day The latest in the long saga of employment tribunal hearings involving whistleblower doctor Chris Day and his ten year fight for justice over patient safety following the avoidable deaths of two patients in the intensive care unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich ended with a judge reserving her decision. This particular hearing concerned the role of top NHS lawyers Hill…

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Social Security watchdog warns ministers of flaws in the scheme to scrap pensioner winter fuel allowances

Department for Work and Pensions In a polite but tough message to Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, the Government’s official advisory body on social security, has exposed flaws in the government’s implementation of its rushed policy to abolish winter fuel allowances for 9.3 million pensioners and encourage the poorest to claim pension credit. It also undermines the government’s…

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How a leading teaching hospital and a coroner failed a young woman who was brain dead 17 hours after being admitted to A & E

Gaia Young Case for a new inquest after coroner Mary Hassell failed to find adequate explanation for her death This is an extremely tragic tale of what happened when a 25 year old healthy and talented woman, Gaia Young, was rushed to accident and emergency with severe headaches only to die of an unexplained brain condition and doctors have yet to correctly diagnose what was wrong with her. The…

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Millions of pensioners on or just above the poverty line will lose winter fuel allowance - Age UK research

The government’s refusal to publish a proper impact study of exactly who will be the worst off from the abolition of the winter fuel allowance for 10.8 million pensioners was one of the worst acts of this new Labour government. Not only was it bad government not to provide the facts on such a big change for so many people but it looks like a deliberate act to conceal the damage ministers knew it…

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How come an NHS Trust can win a national diversity award when its ethnic minority staff are reporting bullying and discrimination?

This weekend Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Foundation Trust won a national award for its diversity and inclusion just after a still to be published national staff survey reveals a high level of dissatisfaction about discrimination and bullying among its employees. The trust which has one of the highest proportion of ethnic minority staff in the country is one of the Excel HPMA award winners. The…

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My interview on the 50swomen pensions scandal and the scrapping of the pensioner's winter fuel allowance

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…

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Time for a full scale investigation into the abusive and bullying behaviour towards women by Judge Philip Lancaster

Judge Philip Lancaster Pic Credit BBC News 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…

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Ministry of Justice and Lady Chief Justice Dame Sue Carr refuse to explain the lawfulness of withholding official ET court records

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…

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Winter Fuel Allowance: Equality statement reveals the scale of Rachel Reeves nasty blow to poor and disabled women pensioners

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 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…