Peter C. Bell

Bit of a rebel. Passionate about: NHS. Mental well-being. Life long learning. Vipassana meditation. Music. Dementia care. Human rights. Criminal Justice system.

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

@NHSLincsICB trying to contact the ICB to ask a question but you never answer the phone

I have left messages as you requested but do not get a callback

How can I contact you?

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

Free canal boat trip down Grantham Canal

Sat 6th June

[Recovery in the Bin @RITB_]

Healthwatch England and all local Healthwatch branches are being abolished. Their independent functions are being moved "in-house" to govt bodies & local authorities as part of the NHS restructuring.
A new Patient Experience Directorate is being created within the Department of Health and Social Care to "manage" patient voices centrally.

Mmm

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

SHE REPORTED RAPE AT WORK

Jan Cruickshank (@LittleJanhere) came to me this week with her story and a file of evidence she has spent years building. What she went through is one of the most shocking workplace cover-ups I have come across.

Jan worked as an apprenticeships officer at the Construction Industry Training Board @CITB_UK. Shortly after she started, a male colleague began subjecting her to sexual harassment that lasted over three years.

Explicit texts. Exposing himself to her at a hotel. Sending her an indecent photograph. A phone call during which he committed a sexual act while she was on the line.

In March 2015, at a conference in a Highland hotel, he came to her room and raped her.

Jan reported him. CITB believed his version instead. He claimed they had been having a consensual affair for three years and that Jan was hitting back because he had ended it. He was put on gardening leave for one week. Then he came back. He was also allowed to continue visiting schools while the investigation was ongoing.

CITB then launched a campaign to remove Jan from the business entirely. Two separate internal whistleblowers later confirmed this was deliberate. CITB's own legal team had calculated that a trial would cost them seriously.

So they chose to destroy her credibility instead. An HR investigation was initiated with the outcome already decided before it concluded. Jan was eventually sacked. The stated reason was misuse of company time by having an affair.

Her criminal case was dropped after @PoliceScotland were told by CITB that the relationship had been consensual. That lie closed the case.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority looked at the evidence independently and reached a completely different conclusion. They awarded Jan compensation as a victim of serious sexual assault.

Jan took CITB to an employment tribunal. They offered her 15k pounds. She refused. She eventually settled for 60k pounds and refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

She said there was never any way she was going to agree to be gagged.

In November 2024, SNP MP Seamus Logan @SeamusLoganMP raised her case in the @HouseofCommons. He told Parliament that Jan had been pressured into a settlement far below what she was owed and that the man she accused was never held to account.

CITB responded with one line saying the matter was settled and they had nothing further to add..

A tribunal ruling recently reported as thrown out with no prospect of success has since been overturned. That decision has not yet reached the press.

Jan is now represented by well know to some of us John Robertson, the same investigator who stood beside Glenn Cottingham Smith before his death and who is currently fighting for my friend John Galajsza in his case against Barclays.

Jan asked herself one question:

"How did a woman who reported sexual misconduct at work end up spending the next decade fighting to defend her own reputation and reclaim a life that was stolen from her."

She was not broken. She documented everything. She refused the gag. She is still standing.

If this story made your stomach turn, share it. Jan has been fighting this alone for ten years.

The least we can do is make sure the right people see it. If you believe cover-ups like this should have consequences, put this in front of your network.

One share might reach the person who finally makes the difference.

Let's help her to be heard!

Sources: @Daily_Record Dec 2018 | @CNplus Nov 2024 | @BylineTimes Aug 2024

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

@marksandspencer cafe on Oxford Street

Section with a view closed

All day breakfast - no poached egg on toast (no bread) - no bacon roll (no bacon)

Asked staff -this IS M&S isn’t it?? 😂

[Joe Rich @joerichlaw]

BREAKING: Post Office General Counsel Jane MacLeod is ‘significant individual’ in criminal investigation, alongside ex-CEO Paula Vennells and ex-Chair Alice Perkins. Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw’s wife (via @NickWallis) https://t.co/cRWRFGej6j

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

THE DOCTOR WHO QUIT WHEN THEY ASKED HIM TO LIE

Dr Greg Wood joined Atos Healthcare in 2010 as a medical assessor, carrying out Work Capability Assessments on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (@DWPgovuk). His job was to decide whether sick and disabled people were fit for work. Simple enough, you'd think. Except it wasn't.

Dr Wood told the BBC he was instructed to change his reports, reducing the number of points awarded to claimants. More points meant more support. Fewer points meant benefits cut. He eventually resigned after his bosses asked him to declare a person he felt was severely ill as fit for work.

He described a culture where, from the moment a file was opened, the working assumption was that the claimant was probably fit for work. Not because the evidence said so. Because that was the preferred outcome.

Atos held a contract worth £100 million a year to carry out these assessments on behalf of the DWP. The government made no secret of wanting the numbers down. And the system delivered exactly that.

Dr Wood said the system was skewed against the claimant. He criticised tests that assumed if someone could walk from the kitchen to the sitting room, they could walk 200 metres, and if a person could dress themselves once in a day, that proved they had enough concentration to hold down a job. He says these rules were never published, just spoken about in training sessions. Atos denied all of it.

The consequences were not abstract. Research from Liverpool and Oxford Universities found the reassessment process between 2010 and 2013 was associated with an extra 590 suicides, 279,000 additional cases of self-reported mental health problems, and 725,000 additional antidepressant prescriptions across England.

In one case, a coroner found that the trigger for Michael O'Sullivan's suicide in September 2013 was his fit-for-work assessment, and wrote to the DWP requesting urgent changes to prevent further deaths.

Dr Greg Wood went on the record. He went to the BBC and the British Medical Journal. He resigned rather than comply.

The system he blew the whistle on ran for years. The contract was eventually cancelled in 2014. Nobody in government or at Atos faced any legal consequence.

Protect whistleblowers. They are the last line of defence when the line of responsibility disappears entirely.

Sources: @BBCNews | @bmj | @DailyMirror | @openDemocracy | @dis_news | @NIHRresearch

[Stephen Davies @sdavieslaw]

Isleworth Crown Court is now listing trials for December 2030.

Let that sink in. We’re in May 2026 — and we’re only a few weeks away from trials being listed in 2031.

This isn’t the fault of the judges or court staff at Isleworth, who are working flat out with the resources they’ve been given. The blame lies squarely with the Ministry of Justice’s weapons-grade incompetence and chronic failure to manage the courts properly.

Delays on this scale are not just inconvenient — they’re a serious injustice. Defendants wait years in limbo. Victims wait years for justice. Witnesses forget. Evidence degrades. Lives are put on hold.

And now we’re being told that this entirely avoidable crisis is being used as an excuse by the Government to chip away at jury trials.

That is not reform. It’s disgraceful.

[ICPR @ICPRtweet]

Legal support cash helps seven in 10 vulnerable clients avoid court https://t.co/iN2mcKZ0r0

[Victoria Rixon @Victoria_Rixon]

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has admitted that its “completely and utterly unacceptable” mistakes meant it failed to protect the public from about 15 professionals whom it should have banned from ever working in healthcare in the UK because they had broken the law.

@nmcnews

[Malcolm Martin @MKMCrofton]

Thanks to @ElCShaikh, Project Brisbane is starting to be brought into the light.

But have @PoliceChiefs & @metpoliceuk yet been provided with a copy - or even informed it exists?

Could cut the costs of Operation Olympos quite substantially. https://t.co/JgOAJ5hk59

[Nick Wallis @nickwallis]

Former Post Office general counsel Jane MacLeod "significant individual" in criminal investigation.

https://t.co/TV3WVUbsYV

#postofficescandal

[Debra Prentice - 48/100 @debrapet]

Sir Alan Bates questions UK government commitment to Post Office criminal investigation | Computer Weekly #postofficescandal #postofficeinquiry #Fujitsu #PaulaVennells https://t.co/dPTXflS8kw

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

@Dorsetecho

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

This is not just mould ... This is M&S mould

[BBC Breakfast @BBCBreakfast]

'There is no justice in delay'

Lee Castleton, who was wrongly convicted in the Post Office IT scandal, spoke to #BBCBreakfast after police warned the criminal investigation could be delayed by five years unless it receives millions of pounds in extra funding

https://t.co/srk9dcrQ3F

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

@DorsetCouncilUK are investigating. It could be that the council are actually the owners of the building - M&S are quitting the building in June or July this year and moving to the new store on Mercery Road but still have the lease until April 2027

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

This is not just mould ... This is M&S mould

[Peter C. Bell @dolphinpcb]

The contaminated water from the cooling is discharged directly on to the highway, runs across the road and down a grating on the other side