Closed and Opaque
What's the opposite of open and transparent?
Closed and opaque, I would say - but I'm open to other suggestions.
Since I wrote my post yesterday about the latest health scandal at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) - the powers that be have announced that the senior figures responsible for the 'cover up' will be identified.
Good - and about time too because there are far too many public bodies in this country that try to hide behind bogus arguments about privacy and data protection - when what they really fear is proper public scrutiny.
And as regular readers know, South Lanarkshire Council in Scotland has used data protection as an argument to withhold what should be public information on Equal Pay - according to the Scottish Information Commissioner and three senior judges in the Court of Session.
Anyway, as I have delved more into the CQC's attempts to sweep the whole business under the carpet - I came across some quotes from two key figures in the affair.
The first is a CQC inspector - Amanda Pollard - who 'blew the whistle' about failures at the NHS watchdog and who quit her job with the regulator three months ago - saying that she was forced out as a result of telling a public inquiry of her fears that the CQC was incapable of spotting another Mid Staffs.
After publication of the damning independent report into CQC's failings - which concluded that the NHS watchdog had covered up evidence of its own failings, Ms Pollard said:
“It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Any kind of concerns you had, just keep your head down. There was no culture of openness.”
Commenting on the CQC's more recent assurances about mending its ways, Amanda Pollard added:
"The proof is in the pudding. They haven’t approached me with any kind of conciliatory words — no one has said you did the right thing to whistleblow. The report completely vindicates my concerns yet I haven’t heard a single thing from them."
Now that seems a strange way to treat someone who was on the right side of the argument - and the same is true of one of the CQC Board Members - Kay Sheldon - who was attacked by people within her own organisation for trying to get to the truth.
Kay Sheldon was a non-executive director of CQC and said that there were serious concerns about the Morecambe Bay Trust in late 2009 and the beginning of 2010 - yet in April 2010 the trust was registered as fully compliant which drew the following comment:
"It just doesn't make sense. There is no way that the trust could have turned itself round in two or three months. It seems to me that CQC gave assurance about the trust that wasn't actually accurate.
"It was a very shocking thing to find thinking that an organisation that's there to protect patients had effectively given what amounted to false assurance and that meant that problems in the trust carried on unacknowledged and unaddressed."
Apparently, Kay Sheldon was then the subject of a vicious campaign led by the CQC Chair (Dame Jo Williams) which tried to undermine her position on the Board - by alleging she was mentally ill and unstable - Kay is still waiting to hear whether her appointment as a Board Member (one of the few who stood up) - will be renewed in November 2013.
Amazing to think this is the NHS we're talking about, but in my personal experience the same sort of culture applies in many parts of local government as well - far too many of these public bodies believe in openness and transparency only when it suits their purpose.
