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The trade union which boasts the largest membership of any in Scotland refuses to answer a simple question. It refuses to answer it in the face of repeated requests from one of its own members: Member 364935.
Anyone who has studied the growing file of correspondence – as I have for the last 13 weeks – cannot fail to be impressed by the tenacity and directness with which Member 364935 keeps asking the question and the shifty manner in which the union
deals with it.
The member is Rab Wilson, a former mental health nurse with Ayrshire and Arran Health Board, and the union is Unison.
Mr Wilson is one of the more admirable people in Scottish public life, a one-man campaigner of awe-inspiring persistence. Last year, in a dramatic resolution of Mr Wilson’s complaint against his own NHS employer, the Scottish information commissioner Kevin Dunion issued the most damning judgement of his career. It came close to accusing a public body of lying.
Kevin Dunion found to his dismay that, although many of the so-called ‘adverse events’ and ‘critical incidents’ in Ayrshire hospitals between 2009 and 2012 had resulted in the deaths of patients, there was only ‘limited evidence’ of any systematic approach to the investigation of these deaths; that the records of some cases had been removed from the board’s database; and that, in others, the required action plan – a set of recommendations for preventing such occurrences in the future – had not been put in place or even considered.
At one stage in his inquiry, Mr Dunion asked for copies of action plans and was informed that none existed. Under pressure, the management produced 56 plans ‘apparently by accident’. Where had they been? And were these documents what they appeared to be? The information commissioner decided that some had been prepared, not in the immediate aftermath of the incidents, but only after Rab Wilson had started to cause trouble.
Mr Dunion concluded that Ayrshire and Arran Health Board had made claims which turned out to be ‘wrong’, given assurances to his office which turned out to be ‘unjustified’, and offered explanations which turned out to be ‘unreliable’. He ordered an inquiry into the board’s affairs by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
As a direct result of Rab Wilson’s heroic campaign, there is a new national framework for managing ‘critical incidents’ and ‘adverse events’ in Scottish hospitals – and for learning from them. But it was a campaign achieved at some personal cost. His employer had resorted to a familiar tactic in such cases, accusing him of being ‘vexatious’ in his pursuit of the truth. When this low expedient failed to work, and Mr Wilson was vindicated by the information commissioner, there was no public apology.
As I wrote at the time: ‘Kevin Dunion’s report catalogues a degree of negligence which ought to have had heads rolling all over the shop. Most of the heads are, however, still very much intact’. Two have subsequently gone – with handsome payoffs at the public expense. Mr Wilson himself has left the employment of Ayrshire and Arran Health Board, not so generously rewarded though with head held high.
But the jigsaw is not quite complete. He is anxious to know why his union declined to support him. He had asked for permission to make a ‘protected disclosure’ which would have enabled him to speak publicly about the disgraceful conduct of his employer. It would have been an act of public service on the part of the union. It might even have saved lives.
I am one of those who have been copied into Rab Wilson’s prolonged correspondence with the union. Time and again he has put the same question: ‘Why did Unison refuse to allow me to make a protected disclosure in a case that involved the deaths of patients? Why would the union not allow such a story to become public?’ Time and again the union hierarchy has dodged the question.
Mr Wilson has just written a letter of despair to the union’s national general secretary, Dave Prentis, in which he accuses the union of ‘behaving in exactly the same despicable manner as that of my erstwhile employer’ – with a complete lack of candour and transparency. He adds: ‘This is a sad day for me…I now pay £15 a year as a retired member for annual membership. Would you prefer me to cancel my membership and leave the union?’
A few days ago the Scottish Review’s Walter Humes heard Rab Wilson speak at a conference in the Scottish Parliament. Professor Humes was sufficiently concerned to write himself to Dave Prentis. He has copied his letter to a number of MSPs and interested journalists.
His [Rab Wilson’s] courageous stand, in the face of strong bureaucratic pressures not to pursue the matter, is an example to us all and is deserving of the highest respect. Against this background, Unison’s decision not to allow him to make a protected disclosure seems puzzling to say the least. His emails asking for an explanation have remained unanswered…To an outsider this seems like corporate evasion of a kind that the
union – quite rightly – would be highly critical of, if it were to be used by an employer. All organisations make mistakes from time to time. When that occurs the only honourable course is to admit what has happened and apologise…Such an outcome would reflect well on you personally and do a little to restore the reputation of the union which, in its handling of this matter, has not come out well.
Despite Walter Humes’s intervention, I have a hunch that Rab Wilson will receive neither explanation nor apology and that Unison will patiently wait until he goes away. Liane Venner, ‘Director of the Executive Office’, has recently informed him that ‘there is no need to repeatedly email the same question please’ – which sounds suspiciously like the union’s last word on the subject. Unison will not miss £15 a year from a retired member, even one of 35 years’ standing, and Mike Kirby will go on making speeches to the comrades about the injustices of the world.
