Month: November 2016

Money Trail

Money Trail

We recently exposed that Dr David Bulpitt has been tasked to review all the victims of an ongoing criminal inquiry:

It was agreed that DBu would review all of the names that are on the Op Hay list to see if they had been given an illegal/incorrect award as a result of being seen by the individual who is currently subject of an investigation.Avon & Somerset OH Review meeting 23rd October 2015 Minutes

We also know that Dr Philip Johnson has been named as ‘working’ on Operation Hay.

johnson-op-hay

It is safe to assume from this email that Bulpitt further instructed Johnson to do the work.  So how much money has the SMP, Dr Philip Johnson been paid?

We’ve looked at the figures published on the Avon and Somerset PCC Openness Spend-over-£500

This only goes up to August 2016.  But we can calculate the missing monetary amount with the answer from this FOI request:

Since 1st December 2015, how much has Avon and Somerset Constabulary paid
to selected medical practitioners contracted to conduct reviews on injured
on duty retired police officers? Please give the exact figure to today’s date with the number of days/hours  worked.

The expenditure for selected medical practitioner is currently recorded as  £74,220. The number of days is recorded as 46 days.https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/costings_4#incoming-892664

From Dec/15 to Aug/16, the PCC shows a total expenditure to Dr Johnson (he invoices his work through his limited company of Sarum Occupational Health) as £54,600.

So this means Sep/16 and Oct/16 saw an expenditure of £74,220 – £54,600 = £19,650.

We’ve combined both months into one column in this chart that shows, by month, all the money that Dr Johnson has received from Avon & Somerset police.

cost-sarum

For almost two years Dr Johnson, whilst conducting the pilot review program, did not invoice anymore than £7200 with a monthly invoice average of £5,193.

Then suddenly, once seven months had elapsed from the action log of the 23rd October 2015 OH review meeting – perhaps the same time it takes to review all the medical files of several hundred people – Dr Johnson bills the force £10,800, £17,820 and then over the two months of September and October 2016, £19,650.

Since August 2014, this is a total of £120,887.

£48,180, which is 40% of this total, was billed between June 2016 and October 2016.

 

 

Redacted/Unredacted

Redacted/Unredacted

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
Roald Dahl

Here’s the reality. This blog and the examples of institutional corruption we are highlighting  against medically-retired former police officers – and likely, those who are both vulnerable and mentally fragile – is part of the large-scale abuse of those with injury awards in this country. To an abuser who likes power and control, a disability is perfect.  The adversary to power and control is exposure.

Exposure can be denied.  So when is something off-limits and how can a public body hide disclosure under the Freedom Of Information Act?  The Freedom of Information Act in the UK does have some limits on disclosure. One method to comply with the act whilst meeting these limits is supplying material in a censored or “redacted” format.

Often you have to take the word of the public body that the redaction has been applied correctly. So when you have both the redacted and un-redacted versions of minutes from the same Avon & Somerset meetings – all of which are concerning their administration (or should that read maladministration) of injury awards – it’s evident that taking this word at face value is a mistake.

Now that these minutes are in the public domain you have the opportunity to decide whether their redaction was legitimate.

Before we get there, let us just discuss redaction.  In this method, a document is made available but with some text removed (often literally with a black marker pen). In the most straightforward cases, this may be just removing the names of junior officials or office staff, usually for privacy reasons.

It’s understandable when  redacted information constitutes personal data, and the public body would be in breach of the Data Protection Act if it were to put such information into the public domain.

But in other cases, large amounts of text are illicitly removed so that documents are almost unreadable and the information value is minimal – for no other reason than they’ll rather you not see it.

This redaction technique is abused so that certain nincompoops can deliberately leave no trace of their decision-making process within the public body they serve.

Strangely enough, such cretins seem to pop up in the administration of injury awards.

Can the disclosure of un-redacted meeting minutes really be prejudicial to the effective conduct of public affairs?  What happens if the public affairs being minuted involves evidence of Malfeasance in a public office, or official misconduct?

Redaction does not give officials an excuse to cover-up the commissioning of their unlawful acts, done in an official capacity, which affects the legitimate performance of true official duties.

It is both highly disturbing and in the public interest to discover an official policy tasked to look at the medical files relating to every individual who was medically retired by a certain deceased police surgeon (employed by Avon & Somerset police between 1972 and 2006), to ascertain if such medical retirement was in their ‘view’ unlawful/illegal.  Especially as this doctor is at the epicentre of an ongoing historical sexual abuse inquiry named Operation Hay.

Potential victims – all who served as police officers – now are suffering the ignominy of a small number of devious employees within Avon & Somerset Police digging through (and without any consent to process) sensitive personal and medical data relating to their injury awards.  In other words, a shadow investigation exists – running parallel to a major criminal inquiry – with the sordid misapprehension that every decision made by this police surgeon (employed by this force for over 30 years) is now open to be revisited.

Isn’t it absolutely abhorrent that the force chooses to investigate only the things relating to their mania to reduce injury awards and seemingly they are in no hurry to question the blood tests of convicted drunk drivers, rape cases or assaults this police surgeon helped to convict?

The IPCC is currently looking into allegations that when a number of officers – likely the same people whose medical files retained by this force are now being ferreted by Dr David Bulpitt –  came forward on separate occasions throughout the 1990s to complain about Dr Bunting, those complaints were not properly investigated by the force.  In other words, whilst the IPCC’s investigates the Operation Hay cover-up the same force is conspiring against the victims whose complaints were brushed aside.

Here are a few choice sentences that the eager redaction gremlins working in A&S attempted to hide from Freedom Of Information disclosure of the minutes of an Avon & Somerset injury award liaison group meeting.  Redaction that we’ve recovered (hence the slightly different font) that tried to hide that Dr David Bulpitt, the current force medical advisor, has been tasked with the thorough inspection of the files of potential victims.

DBu [David Bulpitt] to review all individuals’ records identified through Op Hay to ascertain which Dr awarded their band or undertook a review of a band given.Avon & Somerset OH Review meeting 23rd October 2015 action log

And

During the course of conversations it became clear that there were some concerns around why certain awards may have been made by the Dr in post at the time. It was agreed that DBu would review all of the names that are on the Op Hay list to see if they had been given an illegal/incorrect award as a result of being seen by the individual who is currently subject of an investigation.Avon & Somerset OH Review meeting 23rd October 2015 Minutes

Of course, A&S do not want the public to know this as it contrary to the law for them, in any way imaginable, to try to revisit old statutory decisions – so they take the black marker to it and redact it all in an attempt to cover it up.

Fortunately for the public good, there is an un-redacted version in the public domain.  The left side shows what happens when you give a black permanent marker to crazed scribblings of an over-enthusiastic denier of public disclosure:

Redacted Un-redacted
minutes-23rd-october-2015-before minutes-23rd-october-2015-after
 Raw & Unformated Version

Click on the image and a new tab will show the disclosure in it’s entirety.  You can use the arrows in the bottom right to toggle to the page two for those with multiple pages.pdf-next-page
We now also get to see evidence that legal services has finally accepted that the GMC enforces that every individual seen by a SMP is a patient of that SMP.

DJ [Daniel Johnson] indicated that due to the information forward to Legal Services from DBu [Dr David Bulpitt] they now had a much clearer understanding of the difficulties being experienced as a result of the GMC indicating that each individual under the review is classified as being a patientAvon & Somerset OH Review meeting 23rd October 2015 Minutes

That each and every person seen by a Selected Medical Practitioner (the prerequisite of such being GMC registration) is their patient is fact – after all it is a medical question – but they want to censure that they now accept it.  We’ve been trying to tell them this for years: the GMC guidance is unambiguous:

The first duty of a doctor registered with the GMC is to make the care of their patient their first concern. The term ‘patient’ in this guidance also refers to employees, clients, athletes and anyone else whose personal information you hold or have access to, whether or not you care for them in a traditional therapeutic relationship.
GMC Confidentiality: disclosing information for insurance, employment and similar purposes

So why is it redacted?  Could it be because it proves their position wrong perhaps.

They also decided to retract information about Operation Hay, as mentioned above, and they talk about the implied threat that legal services are going to put in the letter about suspending an injury award when consent to medical information is withdrawn.

This leads us to the ‘action log’ from the same meeting.  They redacted the recorded statement that their lawyer, Daniel Johnson, stated that such suspension is unlawful but, as an aside, they’ll still write a letter dripping with a purely heinous form of blackmail, that will be sent out to imply an unlawful thing will be actually be carried out.

Were these threatening letters actually sent out?  Perhaps they were, and the poor recipient capitulated to a threat with menaces.  Ironically, to acquiesce to such blackmail usually results in a ‘gun for hire’ SMP applying apportionment or some unlawful earnings assessment to reduce the injury award; see the predicament the former officer faces? – they are truly damned if they don’t and then damned anyway.

If anyone reading this has received such a letter, then they are advised to seek counsel with a specialist solicitor.

Looking behind the black permanent marker and you see this:

DJ advised the Pension Authority that when sending out letters to individuals who have withdrawn consent that a reduction in banding given can only be implied as you cannot predetermine and outcome if release is not madeAction Log 23rd October 2015

So far they have obviously redacted the truths that we have been shouting for a while, but few in a position of power believed – the truth that they manipulate the law for their own ends.

Here is the action log for the 23/10/2015 meeting in its ingloriously malignant splendour:

Redacted Un-redacted
action-log-23rd-october-2015-before action-log-23rd-october-2015-after
 Raw & Unformated Version

Rather than try to hide it by redacting, the stuff found within shouldn’t have been thought, said nor written in the first place.

What else have these deviants been up to?

The 1st of March minutes has a section redacted that mentions reviewing people without passing the medical question to the SMP. On it’s own, this isn’t too aberrant.  However, if you factor in the draconian practice this force has conducted to drag severely ill people – those who haven’t had any correspondence from the force for a long time – in front of Dr Philip Johnson without exemption, you start to wonder why the sudden deviation from their usual behaviour.

Apparently a band four (therefore one of Dr Bulpitt’s  unfavoured selfish and preposterous few) and band one were reviewed on paper by Dr Bulpitt himself, without the demand to be medically examined.  Rather a change of tactic here given that Dr Philip Johnson earned £74,220 for 46 days work from Avon & Somerset in from December 1st 2015 to 11th October 2016.

Redacted Un-redacted
minutes-1st-march-2016-before minutes-1st-march-2016-after

If Bulpitt was doing the work of a SMP, why was Johnson still being paid?  And why are some retired officers forced to see Dr Johnson and interrogated for two hours when others get a free pass for a paper review?  Consistency is not their strong point.

And finally onto the 14th June 2016 minutes.  This is the excerpt that has been redacted from the document on the left:

RW raised the issues of information disclosed via FOI’s, as LG personal email  had been disclosed, although we are unsure through which avenue FOI or
Subject Access request.
Action: SA to check with relevant depts. and CD to check with JK  SA/CD

RW is Richard Wand.  He is a former constable and now a civilian employed by Avon & Somerset Federation JBB as a Regulations and Welfare Advisor

Redacted Un-redacted
14th-june-2016-notes-of-iod-liaison-group-mtg-before 14th-june-2016-notes-of-iod-liaison-group-mtg-after
Raw & Unformated version

Hardly a section that screams out to be redacted given LG is unidentified and RW is listed, un-redacted, as an attendee: Richard Wand RW Police Federation.  There does not seem to be any sane reason why redaction has been implemented but it is a clear example why you shouldn’t trust the whys and wherefores they use to justify redacting something.

They want to hide behind the black permanent marker.  Unfortunately on this occasion the marker was filled with disappearing ink.

Abuse of the Freedom of Information Act is bad enough when it happens.  When it is the Police performing the abuse the affect is magnified exponentially as their expected standard is higher given their position and that they have a near-monopoly on the use of coercive force.

It is also clear that when these people do things in the full knowledge that they are wrong they put aside the fact that the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public is a significant determinant of police effectiveness.

For those reading this, shocked and with their mouths agape, staring at a screen and trying to parse everything that has happened, here’s a recap:

  • The lead solicitor for the Legal Services department of Avon & Somerset constabulary has confirmed that Regulation 33 PIBR 2006 cannot be used to punish the withdrawal of medical consent.  Despite this, he is fully prepared to deceive a member of the public into believing that their injury award can be punitively reduced by suggestion alone.  This policy had been redacted as a means of censorship to avoid the ensuing scandal. 
  • The force medical advisor of the same police force that employed a doctor (now deceased), whose actions are currently under investigation for dozens of sex attacks on young officers during medical examinations, has taken it upon himself to revisit final statutory decisions by looking whether all the ill-health retirements decided by the police pension authority, over a period of 30 years, were unlawful.   This policy had been redacted as a means of censorship to avoid the ensuing scandal.

You might think that sounds conspiratorial. It is.

This is more than just isolated bad-apples.  The utterings of those who attended these IOD liaison meeting meetings was not redacted by them – powers above them allowed this happen.  Another internal department would’ve been complicit in deciding  to remove whatever they considered sensational:  Corporate Information Management, Legal Services and no doubt, members of the senior executive team must have had a role to authorise this.  You can imagine how it was said, with a red-faced senior figure screaming “whatever you do, don’t let that get out!

What does it say about the culture of ethics existing in such an organisation that allows a cover-up to evolve into a conspiracy.

When a member of Parliament gives such a damning speech in the House of Commons – Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) on the Chief Constable Of Avon And Somerset Police Force – there is clearly a systemic ‘rotten barrel’ explanation that permeates through the senior management subculture.

From this point onwards do not give the police force you served with the benefit of the doubt.  When you are sent a threatening letter, think that they are probably lying and trying to coerce you to do something you have no lawful obligation to do.

If you are disclosed heavily redacted information then demand them to explain the exemption applied.  If they refuse to explain why each and every sentence has been blacked out then take the matter to the ICO.

The minutes should be specific to the matter being minuted.  You asked for disclosure from that meeting and therefore everything talked about, excluding the obvious personal information, should be in play for disclosure.

Hiding behind a veil of secrecy is an act deployed by Soviet Union’s KGB and East Germany’s Stasi.  It is unforgivable for such tactics to be seen in the UK.

As our skin crawls, it is worth forcing ourselves to look at the reality – we must confront not only the scale of these abused, disabled victims but also this country’s failure to help them.

 

 

The Wisdom of the Pension Ombudsman

The Wisdom of the Pension Ombudsman

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.”
Michel de Montaigne

In 2016, the months of September and October has seen two interesting decisions handed down by the Pension Ombudsman (PO).  In both decisions it is clear the arrogance of the pension authority involved led them to think the forcefulness of their command would conceal the lack of reason within.

One decision concerns Thames Valley Police and how this force (and vicariously by the SMPs they appointed) incorrectly apportioned an on-duty injury by trying to imply that the complainant, Ms E, had a pre-existing vulnerability to mental illness.  The infamous  Dr Cheng is in the centre of this particular stagnant mire.

The second Pension Ombudsman decision we are going to discuss here isn’t about police injury awards but it does involve ill-health retirement.  Mr Y complained to the Pensions Ombudsman that NGF Europe Pension Fund’s refusal of an ill-health early retirement pension was maladministration.  The Ombudsman upheld Mr Y’s complaint and directed the employer to make the decision again.

The points raised by the PO in these decisions have huge implications for police forces. Each will be discussed but let us first look at Mr Y’s case.

The PO found that NGF relied too much on it’s own occupation health clinician and ignored the expert opinion of the patient’s own clinicians:

NGF’s view that it is entitled to prefer its medical advisers’ opinions when there is a conflict of opinion between them and those of Mr Y’s GP and the consultant treating him, demonstrates that NGF saw its medical advisers’ own opinions of Mr Y’s state of health as at least equal to those of a specialist in a particular field of medicine. https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/determinations/2016/po-13059/ngf-europe-pension-fund/

Effectively, the PO is saying employers can not simply rely on the recommendations  of their own ‘in-house’ medical advisers and that it is not…

“[…] rational to give considerable weight to a prediction that had not been fully explored and was outside the adviser’s remit”. https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/determinations/2016/po-13059/ngf-europe-pension-fund/

The decision says that, whether or not the employer (or regards to injury awards, the police pension authority) is understandably concerned about if the treating doctors of the patient have understood the definition of total incapacity, it can not give undue considerable weight to the opinion of it’s own assessor.

How often is a one-sided view taken by a SMP?  Every-time that SMP is trained or advised by certain elements within NAMF is the answer.

It is a well recorded fact that often SMPs deliberately disregard what a former officer’s General Practitioner or treating consultant have said.  Indeed Nicolas Wirz, solicitor for Northumbria police has been so unguarded as to write in his NAMF approved ‘guidance’ to SMPs that:

SMPs are likely to be more skilled at resolving disputes of medical fact [Para 4.12 POLICE PENSIONS (SMP) DEVELOPMENT EVENT 31 JANUARY 2014 MR NICHOLAS WIRZ PRESENTATION]

and

A common occurrence is for the treating physician to “fudge” the issue [Para 4.14 POLICE PENSIONS (SMP) DEVELOPMENT EVENT 31 JANUARY 2014 MR NICHOLAS WIRZ PRESENTATION]

In other words, a highly qualified, experienced specialist consultant’s opinion is nothing compared to that of some money-grabbing quack who has jumped on the gravy train of doing SMP work. Moreover, said consultant will be biased, whereas the SMP will be squeaky clean unbiased.

Come off it Wirzy-boy, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. Do you really think that you can fool anyone other than the intellectually-challenged likes of Cheng and Nightingale, etc. with this sort of manure? You have got dear old Karen thinking she is a High Court Judge who can ‘direct’ people to do her bidding, and good old Billy Chung Wing prefers not to engage his brain other than to remember where he has stashed all his illicit earnings. The rest of the medical profession have wisely elected to give SMP work a wide berth because of you.

But we digress – the case of Mr Y shows that the PO disagrees with Mr Wirz.  In fact it leaves Mr Wirz’s claims naked.  His imagined invention of an aura of being ‘judicially all-powerful’ is simply his cloak for SMPs to wear. Cloaks that make them feel better about themselves.  Not only delusional cloaks, if cloaks can be delusional, but clearly not in accordance with fact that the SMP is acting as an employer’s agent.

An agent with a role defined in statute – but an agent of an employer nonetheless.

The SMP is no more a presiding judge than, say, a Custody Sergeant with his duties defined in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

The PO declared that when it comes to Mr Y’s ill-health retirement there were relevant questions which should have been asked and that the employer and his medical adviser should not apply a selective restriction to the reports provided by the patient’s clinicians.

The PO’s decision could be exactly applied to the erroneous methodology preached by Wirz.  The PO has said it is wrong for pension authorities, like NGF, to only take into account its medical advisers’ opinions as this, by it’s nature, will also take in irrelevant considerations.

So yet again the proclamations of Nicholas Wirz are proved wrong – SMPs must resist being brainwashed by the outpourings from this darkly dubious source into thinking the Regulations are too complex for the patient’s clinicians to comprehend.  If the SMP has suspicions the clinician doesn’t understand the statutory question then he shall not dismiss the opinion outright, he should seek clarification.  Put plainly, the PO says they should just ask:

It would not have been difficult to ask them, but this was not done; https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/determinations/2016/po-13059/ngf-europe-pension-fund/

In the PO’s judgement NGF Europe held a dismissive view of important reports and it was wrong for it to claim that it had enough evidence already and clarification was unnecessary.  This arrogance conveys the impression that the decision not to award a total incapacity pension had already been made.

And so, onto the decision in respect of Ms E’s complaint to the PO.

This concerned the granting of an original injury award.  The first SMP, Dr Leeming-Latham, made the  decision to apportion Ms E’s injury benefit on nothing more substantial than than the appearance of a single entry in her GP’s notes dating from 1988 stating, “Depressional neurosis”.

Despite being told that a reconsideration of Dr Leeming-Latham ‘s decision (under regulation 32) would be a paper exercise, Ms E had the unfortunate experience of attending an appointment with Dr Cheng.  Not only did Dr Cheng think the apportionment applied by Leeming-Latham was reasonable but he also considered the 1988 notes demanded an apportionment bedfellow, and commented that:

general formal grievances that were not upheld and disciplinary proceedings should not be classified as an injury on duty”. https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/determinations/2016/po-5477/police-injury-benefit-scheme/

You can see how Dr Cheng’s brain was working … when you are asked to review a complaint of inappropriate apportionment, why stop at one.  Why not add further apportionment and then you can try to apportion the whole award away?

Seizing the chance with both hands to go gaga full-bore crazy, Dr Cheng continued by saying Ms E actually had a problem with her wrist, which was incorrect.  On top of all this Ms E had expressed concern her papers might have been mixed up with someone else’s. She also said that Dr Cheng had told her he never gave anyone a 100% degree of disablement.

This was all taken to a PMAB, where the basis for the appeal was that Ms E disputed Dr Cheng’s opinion that her disablement placed her in Band Two for an injury award.

Ms E won the appeal and was awarded a band three award.  The PMAB found Dr Cheng was wrong and concluded that the psychological impairment arising from perceptions of work events were the only factor contributing to permanent disablement and that apportionment was not appropriate.

A victory against the odds!  The PO mentioned in his judgement that Ms E raised concerns that the PMAB appeared to exhibit bias.  Ms E specifically called into question the unnecessary time delays, the lack of female presence, that there was no mention at the hearing of her being put under surveillance while on sick leave, nothing submitted relating disciplinary proceedings whilst she was on sick leave and the horrendous situation of the conflict of interest that existed as TVP’s Pensions Manager and Dr Cheng both sat on the national HR board for the PMAB.  Ms E was awarded £750 for all the maladministration.

And now we can weave together the similarity between Ms E’s decision and Mr Y’s.

Just like NGF Europe Pension Fund’s modus operandi, both TVP and the PMAB “cherry picked” Ms E’s documents.  Favourable reports from a Dr Logsdail were not considered and personal development reviews, papers relating to her grievances, newspaper articles criticising her, and emails from senior staff criticising her were all ignored by Dr Cheng and the PMAB.

Sound familar?  TVP, as a pension authority, had a duty not to have a predetermined decision in mind.  But they used Cheng and Leeming-Latham to get the result they wanted by ignoring everything that contradicted their point of view.

This is exactly what the PO is getting at in the decision of Mr Y.

The simple message for all police pension authorities is to keep this in mind: you only get one chance to do things right the first time.

Why not dispense with your biased SMPs and save money and improve the quality of injury award decisions by making fewer mistakes and learning more from those you do make.  Tell the SMPs you use to look objectively at all the evidence placed in front of them.  Stop using Dr Cheng and the number of appeals will plummet.

This means also put the Book of NAMF in the bin where it belongs.

It must be better, quietly and without fuss, noise and bluster, to aim to get things right in the first place rather than having to forced to put them right through expensive appeal and complaint processes. You may well think that the likes of Cheng and Wirz save you money. You would be wrong to think that. The legal challenges you are facing now are only the tip of the iceberg.

The Enablers of Dr Cheng

The Enablers of Dr Cheng
enabler
noun
plural noun: enablers a person or thing that makes something possible. a person who encourages or enables negative or self-destructive behaviour in another.

Prepare yourself if your life has been touched by this individual, or others like him.

Ready? …  OK. Let us now ponder the contradiction that is  Dr William Chung Wing Cheng (GMC Reference Number 1631726). He is that thankfully rare being – a doctor who seemingly sets out to do harm.

As those unfortunate to cross his path can attest, he is beyond parody. There are just so many anecdotes of personal suffering inflicted on those forced to submit to one of his so-called ‘medical assessments’ in relation to ill health retirement or an an injury on duty award that there isn’t the space for this blog to go into exact details of his escapades. Suffice to say that everywhere he goes he manages to further damage already damaged individuals.

Rather than focus on what motivates Dr Cheng, which from the eyes of those put before him seems to be nothing more complicated than a greed-fuelled need to make money, we are going to discuss why Dr Cheng is employed as a SMP.

William Cheng is a name well known by those who read these pages. Troubling as his behaviour is, the fact he is given the opportunity to be unpleasant is evidence of the greater malaise affecting the administration of injury awards. How is it that a doctor who does harm is allowed to continue in post?

There are a multitude of reasons to think the ill-health and injury retirement process, and the administration of injury on duty pensions in the police is corrupted: the group-think of police management at all levels is one of them. Cowardice is another. Dr Cheng is the tool of the jellyfish: spineless HR directors synchronised swimming in one terminal direction by using Dr Cheng as their proxy.

In a just world disabled former police officers would not be placed in front of him only to be injured further by the trauma of facing not only his perverse decisions but his lies and his nasty attitude. Dr Cheng shows no compassion, no care, no empathy. He is a cold machine which has but one layered purpose, and that purpose is not to heal or comfort the sick, but to make money out of misery and make more misery so as to make more money.

Cheng is allowed to continue his work in this field as he comes across as a willing, arrogant, compliant part of a methodology devised by senior personnel intended to sideline and work around the Regulations whilst creating the illusion of performing a statutory duty.

Cheng does their bidding with gusto. He is not concerned should anyone find the strength to appeal his decisions, as he will earn another fee for attending each PMAB. For HR and Legal Services, and the bean counters, the appeal process is there to deter the vast majority from making any challenge. It is a win-win arrangement for Cheng and his paymasters. Over time Cheng saves them money. An injury pension paid at a lower band for the next thirty years, set against the single outlay of Cheng’s fee is a good deal. Every serving officer who is refused an ill health pension represents money freed up to be spent in other ways. Never mind that the Regulations are intended to support and compensate, in recognition of the inherent dangers present in police work. Never mind the obligation to see that the Regulations are applied fairly and correctly. Put such considerations to one side wherever there is an opportunity to save money.

Any suggestion that Dr Cheng is biased is portrayed as an assault on the entire medical profession and is seen as an affront to the vested interests in HR, as represented by the inner cabal within the NAMF , who would no doubt fall behind a campaign supporting Dr Cheng. We would hear from them that he is, in their view, independent and the appeals against him are just a consequence of the work that he does.

Yet from the evidence, the amount of appeals he generates appears to be a giant ball of flame hurtling into an abyss of despair.

These figures obtained from the Home Office show Dr Cheng has been responsible for a remarkable 28% of ALL PMAB hearings in the five years between 2010 to 2015.

 Year Total appeal hearings No. hearings that Dr Cheng attended No. these hearings that were appeals against Dr Cheng’s decision No. these upheld (appellant’s appeal successful)
2010 100 12 12 3
2011 73 6 6 2
2012 50 10 10 2
2013 54 7 7 3
2014 67 30 30 8
2015 93 57 57 1

So out of all the SMPs in the UK – of all 43 police forces, just one doctor has caused over almost a third of all appeals to PMABs.

% of Cheng PMABs appeals % of Cheng Appeals Upheld (successful for appellant)
2010 12.00% 25.00%
2011 8.22% 33.33%
2012 20.00% 20.00%
2013 12.96% 42.86%
2014 44.78% 26.67%
2015 61.29% 28.07%

In 2015 almost two thirds of PMABs nationwide were because of Dr Cheng.  Over the full five year period 28% of appeals were found against this doctor.

The woeful number of successful appeals hides a truth. It is surprising that even this many appeals are won given the very real David v Goliath situation faced by the disabled former officer, but the truth is that it’s not just Dr Cheng who disabled former officers have to fight – it is the strength in numbers provided by the closed of ranks of full bureaucracy some forces chose to bring to bear against vulnerable damaged individuals – it can be breathtaking in its audacious scope and scale.

Any disabled former officer daring to challenge a decision by Dr Cheng is immediately faced with a wall of resistance from HR, and all others concerned. They close ranks behind their shields, as to admit any error is simply not within their collective psyche. Push against the shield wall and what results are accusations of vexatious behaviour and insane warped spouting of concepts of ‘duty’ wrapped up in wrongly interpreted extracts from the Regulations.

The Legal Services departments of some forces can and do provide a supportive environment for someone like Cheng to thrive in. HR use them to attempt justification for their maladministration, but the old saying, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ applies. The answer you get depends on the question you ask, and HR never ask the right questions. A HR manager seeking to protect themselves from blame will never ask an impartial question. If, by some fluke, they get a legal opinion which does not support their actions, then it never sees the light of day. Whenever HR say, ‘We have taken legal advice‘ they always, always, refuse to divulge what that advice is, thus avoiding the rightness or strength of that advice being subjected to objective scrutiny.

Do we have examples of how legal services conspire with HR to make life extremely unpleasant for anyone unfortunate to be placed in front of a SMP such as Dr Cheng? …

Of course we do.

The link below is to a discussion which is repeated in similar form in every meeting room, in every force that uses ‘gun for hire’ SMPs:

whatdotheyknow.com – IOD liaison minutes 23rd October 2015.pdf.html

Avon & Somerset uses the services of gun for hire Dr ‘Deadeye’ Philip Johnson but the thought process are the same.  Use the might of a public body to hammer aside the inadequacies of the doctor.

Official / Secret / Top Secret

Date of minutes Action # Action Update Date due RAG Owner O C
25/09/15 3.1
It was agreed that the Pension Authority could write to the individuals requesting that they release their information and that failure to do so would mean that a full review has not been able to be conducted and therefore based on the information available the award will be reduced to zero within a specified time limit.

Legal Services to provide advice to Pension Authority on wording of such a letter.

DJ advised the Pension Authority that when sending out letters to individuals who have withdrawn consent that a reduction in banding given can only be implied as you cannot predetermine and outcome if release is not made. The Pension Authority should advise what information can and will be taken into account when making a determination. This template letter will be sent in the first instance to TH, PT and AP who have all withdrawn consent.

DJ is an acronym for Daniel Johnson, the solicitor advocate (lawyer) who works for the Legal Services team in Avon and Somerset Constabulary (and as far as we know no relation to the namesake doctor).

The above extract is evidence the Solicitor Advocate for A&S, was willing to condone and justify a letter to disabled former officers intended to misdirect and threaten.  A threat that is in fact a blatant bluff. What kind of solicitor can willingly conspire to make empty threats to disabled folk?

We need hardly remind our readers that there is no provision whatever within the Regulations for an injury pension to be reduced to zero should an individual fail to give consent for access to their sensitive personal information. Sending a letter which implies otherwise is a deliberate attempt to pervert the intent and purpose of the Regulations. It is a shocking indictment of the complete abandonment of professional ethics by the solicitor concerned. Daniel Johnson correctly warned the Pension Authority that a reduction in banding could not be applied as desired in the circumstances described, thus covering his back. But, he then offered a work-around to HR, telling them to merely imply that a reduction could result.

So, could a reduction ever result when an individual refuses to give consent for the SMP to inspect their medical record, or their financial and employment record? The answer is that such an outcome would be very very unlikely, as the Pension Authority is only entitled to make a decision on such evidence and medical advice as they think necessary. In the absence of any medical record there would be no evidence and no doctor could give informed advice with no records on which to base his opinion?

We can guarantee that nobody receiving such a letter would know the threat was an empty one. They would see it as real and would think they had no alternative other than to give consent to allow all and sundry to pour over their sensitive personal data.

If a Police Authority were to reduce a pension in these circumstances, there would be grounds for an immediate appeal, probably by way of a judicial review. The pensioner might be criticised for failing to cooperate, but the court would then hear the full and ugly history of threats, incompetence, misinformation, and corruption which compelled the individual to be fearful, with good reason, that the process was unlawful. Why should anyone cooperate with an unlawful process?

We have written about this before, but, bearing in mind that our audience includes some decent but possibly misinformed, misguided HR managers, SMPs and force solicitors, we will once more present the relevant regulation:

Refusal to be medically examined

  1. If a question is referred to a medical authority under regulation 30, 31 or 32 and the person concerned wilfully or negligently fails to submit himself to such medical examination or to attend such interviews as the medical authority may consider necessary in order to enable him to make his decision, then—

(a)if the question arises otherwise than on an appeal to a board of medical referees, the police authority may make their determination on such evidence and medical advice as they in their discretion think necessary;

(b)if the question arises on an appeal to a board of medical referees, the appeal shall be deemed to be withdrawn

IODPA has no issue with lawfully held reviews of degree of disablement. We advise controlled and carefully specified consent to allow access to personal information relevant to the regulatory process. We do not advise that anyone give carte blanche consent to allow anyone to obtain, access and process their personal information. We see no reason why anyone in HR or Occupational Health should ever need to see any personal information beyond name, contact details, and degree of disablement for pension payment purposes of private citizens who were once police officers.

IODPA campaigns against unlawful application of the Regulations.

We try not to descend to personal name calling, but with the likes of Dr Cheng it is impossible not to see that the character and moral deficiency of the individual is the problem. We try to highlight the errors made by HR and others, and here we are really identifying systemic failures – maladministration resulting from a combination of numerous errors of thinking, faulty training or lack of training, the inability to accept that errors need to be admitted and corrected, the complete lack of good faith, the bias arising from a misplaced sense that disabled former officers, not the officials then in charge, were responsible for historic mistakes, and, above all, the repugnant view of injury pensions as a drain on scarce resources, making them a legitimate target for a determined and evolving attempt to reduce that burden by foul means.

So, Dr Cheng, we don’t like you, but we think you are the sort of pathetic morally bankrupt individual who is a gift to the corrupt managements which employ your services. Our real contempt is for them, as without them you could not continue to do your harm. Against this confederacy of dunces stands IODPA.  We are brave enough to risk to tell the truth. We hope and trust that the decent, moral, HR managers, SMPs and legal people who work without controversy in the majority of police forces will join with us in exposing and rooting out this cancer of corruption which is in their midst.

All that it takes to enable corruption to spread is that people of good intent do nothing.

NAMF’s Northumbrian Mafia

NAMF’s Northumbrian Mafia

A quick update from the dark-suited, shadowy world of the National Attendance Management Forum (NAMF). November 1st sees the start of the Mexican Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), so is a suitable date to publish NAMF conference minutes.

NAMF is nothing more than a vehicle for certain elements to put into practice “entryism”. Entryism (or entrism [1]) is a tactic in which the members of an organised group conspire to secretly join a larger organisation en masse, with the intention of changing the targeted organisation’s policies or actions. The NAMF contains a hard core of people of ill intent, with the others there to give an appearance of legitimacy and to be led like sheep by the inner circle. Read more about NAMF here



The June 2016 minutes state that “Don” Chris Rowson, Head of HR at West Midlands Police, has left his position of chairman of NAMF.
namf-june18
Northumbria Mafia have pulled off a coup. The new Don Chair is Lesley Ann Knowles, Head of HR for Northumbria Police, with Steve Mitchell of Notts HR as Vice Chair.

Mitchell has form in the maladministration of injury awards.  Along with the late Dr Ralph Sampson, he was the co-host of their rather despicable ‘all about the money‘ PowerPoint presentation performed to delight some cherry-picked NAMF delegates about the Notts mass review program.

It’s rather ominous that the new chair comes from the force with the most judicial reviews in recent times … Crudace, Simpson and Haworth were all High court decisions won against Northumbria and it’s solicitor Nicholas Wirz by disabled former officers.

Northumbria is a well known pit of despair and they now are the “Boss” of a cloak-and-dagger national cabal – a secret society that, even after a ‘search’, the Home Office has pretended they have no knowledge of it.   Gulp!

Could it be that Health Management Limited (HML), the firm with the Home Office contract to run PMABs, no longer wants any part in NAMF because of those in charge can’t help themselves to muck things up?

namf-june16-2

The above extract also from the June 2016 NAMF minutes show that HML will no longer be attending NAMF conferences.

Of course, the burning question is why is it that the commercial company which has the current contract to run the PMAB hearings has only just realised that sending their employees to NAMF raises the conflict of interest for HML’s reputation for integrity, independence and contractual requirement for high standards, or may be reasonably perceived to do so.

A sure sign that NAMF is careening off a cliff is when high-level staff start fleeing the sinking ship and begin to go back to their day job or even into business for themselves (e.g. former TVP Head of HR and NAMF delegate Chris Sharp).

With Northumbria in charge, NAMF is in such terrible shape. Those going to the Tally Ho! conferences, seeking the elusive gold-standard best practise, will soon realise they won’t find it there and are in fact being misled by the false prophets of Wirz and Lesley Ann Knowles.  Like Mr Rowson, Mr Sharp and HML, they’ll also begin to plan for their own futures by disavowing themselves from the previously cosy NAMF relationship.

 

This group of police force HR managers, occupational health personnel and the odd force solicitor is supposedly concerned in its quarterly meetings with keeping the police workforce fit and well. The clue is in the name - it is supposed to concentrate on people who work. However, it spends time also considering matters relating to disabled former officers. Quite what legitimates this group's interest in disabled private citizens who are in receipt of a police injury pension is a mystery.

The mystery deepens when it is revealed that the Home Office and representatives of the commercial company which has the contract to run Police Medical Appeal Boards, HML, also regularly appear on the list of delegates. The mystery morphs into something smelling of conspiracy when the delegate list is entirely absent of any representative of any of the people whose lives the NAMF seeks to affect. There is nobody from the Police Federation, nor from NARPO, nor anyone from any disablement charity, mental health association, etc. etc. In other words, the NAMF is a one-sided talking shop. Even at that level it is not properly representative of all police forces, for we note that there are rarely, if ever, delegates present from every area.

Those of us with long memories, recollect that the Home Office claimed that it had conducted what it called a 'survey' of all forces, way back in 2004, prior to finalising its unlawful guidance issued as Annex C to HO circular 46/2004. The HO claimed that their survey showed that it was common practice for forces to review the degree of disablement of injury-on-duty pensioners once they reached what would have been normal force retirement age. This is what the guidance said:

'This Guidance is being issued to help ensure a fairer, more cohesive approach to the payment of injury benefits to ill-health retired officers who have reached the compulsory retirement age with their Force. A recent survey found that practice in this area was diverse. Some forces automatically reduced degree of disablement benefits to the lowest banding when this age had been reached - others continued to pay benefits at the same rate until the death of the Officer concerned.'

The plain truth, revealed through Freedom of Information Act requests, was that there never was any survey. The HO later tried to claim that the bold, unmistakable claim made in its guidance resulted from 'round the table discussions' at meetings of the NAMF. Yet nothing even hinting at such discussions appeared in the minutes and the HO could not produce a single scrap of data nor any record or any other evidence to show quite how it had come to the conclusion that some forces automatically reduced benefits to the lowest band at what would have been normal force retirement age.

Shockingly, further research revealed that absolutely no forces, not a single one out of the 43 in England and Wales, had ever reduced benefits to the lowest band at what would have been normal force retirement age, automatically or otherwise. The Home Office was caught out in a blatant lie. It was a lie intended for one purpose only - its actually intent was to give an air of normalcy to the huge change in practice which the HO wished to bring about.

This astounding act by a Government department tells us what the NAMF was then, and remains now. It's objective in so far as police injury on duty pensions is concerned, is to subvert the law of the land. The law cannot be changed retrospectively, so the inner circle work to find ways to unlawfully manipulate it through influencing gullible HR managers, and by training carefully selected corruptible SMPs how to refuse grant of an injury award and how to conduct reviews which reduce the degree of disablement of retired officers.

And so the machinations of the NAMF continue...