BBC (Bollix Broadcasting Corporation)
I've been calling for an inquiry into Glasgow City Council's equal pay scandal for years.
The evidence of 'wrongdoing' or 'negligence' has been pretty overwhelming, if you ask me, culminating in two devastating judgments from the Court of Session (Scotland's highest civil court), in August 2017 and again in December 2017, condemning Glasgow's WPBR pay scheme as 'unfit for purpose'.
Sadly, Scotland's establishment turned a 'deaf ear' - even after our country's public spending watchdog (the Accounts Commission) called the ongoing scandal over equal pay "a decade long failure of leadership by local and central government" - there was hardly a murmur from the great, the good and the not so good.
So pardon me if I laugh out loud at this ridiculous headline from BBC Scotland which calls for an 'inquiry' into the fees paid to A4ES over Glasgow's equal pay settlement.
Bring it on, I say - and broaden the remit to include the past behaviour and decisions of senior politicians and council officials.
I would love nothing better.
Because A4ES has absolutely nothing to hide and unlike Glasgow City Council we have been honest and upfront from the outset in the fight for equal pay in Scotland's councils.
Our clients know that without A4ES this long fight for would never have started, never mind end up in an historic victory at the Court of Session which led to a £500 million equal pay settlement with Scotland's largest council.
Glasgow City Council of course, had cheated and robbed its largely female workforce of their rights to equal pay for years until A4ES came along in 2005 and changed the course of history for the better.
So the BBC headline is absurd if you ask me, especially after its 'Disclosure' programme which had not a word to say about the role of senior officials in Glasgow City Council who have presided over a real equal pay scandal for many years.
The truth is that A4ES is largely responsible for holding councils like Glasgow to account and for some strange reason this seems to stick in some folks' craw.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-50056097
Equal pay: Call for inquiry over 'troubling' Glasgow fees
A high-profile lawyer has called for an inquiry into Glasgow City Council's £548m equal pay settlement.
Carol Fox, a former solicitor, who was instrumental in litigating against councils across Scotland, made the call following a BBC Disclosure programme.
Ms Fox said she was "troubled" that women who were represented by unions had paid fees, which were believed to be about 6.9% of each settlement.
She said the women should be given an "immediate refund".
The Great Equal Pay Scandal documentary revealed that all 16,000 claimants who received a payout in the long-running equal pay dispute had legal fees deducted from their settlement.
This included women represented by unions which had told members they would not pay any costs.
A proportion of the legal fees went to private claims company called Action 4 Equality, run by lawyer Stefan Cross, which had represented the largest group of claimants.
Almost half of the settled claims were pursued by the three unions - Unison, GMB and Unite.
Ms Fox, who worked on the Glasgow equal pay claim until 2015, told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland: "The union women were always told they would get 100% of any settlement, that they didn't pay fees.
"The Action 4 Equality women had a signed document where they knew that fees would be paid."
She said: "I really do think there needs to be a full inquiry, whether that's a parliamentary inquiry, an inquiry by the Law Society of Scotland, to look at what has happened here.
"I would call for the books of Action 4 Equality to be opened up to scrutiny."
Ms Fox worked as a trade union lawyer before joining Action 4 Equality in 2008 and leaving in 2015. She had no part in the final negotiations for the current Glasgow settlement.
The former lawyer said: "Those people who can't see the problem here, are very much part of the problem."
In Monday night's programme, Action 4 Equality's Stefan Cross said "all claimants" had paid 6.9% in fees.
"They're being paid by everybody," he said. "All claimants. It's a team effort."
The three unions - GMB, Unison and Unite - told the programme no union claimants had paid legal fees, and none was left at a detriment from the deal.
