AS THIS BLOG has previously reported, the government’s trade union watchdog – known as the ‘certification officer’ – published a major report on 12 February into the FBU ‘hush money’ affair. The long-running scandal, which was first exposed on these pages and almost certainly contributed to Matt Wrack’s ousting as general secretary in January, centres on the secret payment of substantial sums of money to a string of union employees who had made claims of workplace mistreatment. In every case, the payment was covered by a non-disclosure agreement.
The certification officer’s report – which was compiled on her behalf by a specially-appointed inspector – exposed a dire lack of transparency and accountability in relation to the payments. It found serious shortcomings in governance procedures, record keeping and understanding of rules. There was no evidence that the union’s executive council or any other committee of the union had exercised proper oversight of the payments – or even been informed of them.
All of which meant that a tiny cluster of the union’s most senior officials tried to get away with spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of members’ money on dubious transactions and then insulating those transactions from scrutiny. It was only thanks to the efforts of this blog that they didn’t ultimately succeed.
People would be entitled to think that the FBU leadership, especially with a new general secretary in place, would show sufficient contrition over the affair – to recognise the gravity of the inspector’s criticisms and the harm caused to the union’s reputation. Yet a story uploaded to the FBU website following publication of the report paid less attention to the inspector’s stinging criticisms than it did a handful of paragraphs which provided a degree of mitigation to the union. The website story was, to be frank, little more than an exercise in spin and suggested that the leadership has not really learned the lessons of the episode.
For example, a central component of the inspector’s investigation was to consider the question of whether FBU rules had been broken in relation to how the secret payments were signed off. On this, the inspector stated in the second paragraph of his report:
‘I found no conclusive evidence that any of the matters referred to in section 37B(2) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 have occurred.‘
Here, the inspector was saying that he found no cast-iron evidence that the union’s rules had been broken. The FBU website story was quick to draw attention to this statement. However, the story completely ignored the preceding paragraph – paragraph 1 – of the inspector’s report, which stated:
‘The Fire Brigades Union has not been able to conclusively demonstrate that it has followed its rules when settlement agreements with financial compensation elements have been agreed.‘
The inspector went on to explain:
‘In its most simple terms, my investigation aimed to answer a straightforward question: when settlement agreements with a financial element were agreed between the union and departing employees, were the rules of the union followed? While the question may appear to invite a simple ‘yes or no’ response, I have found that the answer is, in fact, much more nuanced. I have not been able to conclusively determine that the rules of the union have been broken, but conversely, the union has not been able to conclusively demonstrate that the rules have been followed. This should be a matter of concern for the union and its members.‘
The inspector further explained that he could not reach a finding on the matter owing to the considerable gaps and inconsistencies in the evidence (he revealed, for example, that the union had been unable to provide him with key documents during his investigation).
Yet there was no mention of this additional context in the FBU’s website story. To a casual observer, the story suggested that the union had been completely exonerated of the charge that it had broken its own rules.
Worse, the headline accompanying the story was a blatant lie. It read:
‘Certification officer report into FBU’s finances finds no breach of rules‘
As we have shown, the inspector made no such finding. The headline therefore represented a grotesque distortion of the truth.
The story and headline remain unaltered on the website to this day, which suggests that the false representation of the inspector’s report was a conscious choice rather than a genuine error.
FBU head office has no business misleading members in this way. We are entitled to be told the truth about such an important matter.
Some members may wonder why the story was manipulated in this way by the union’s head office. It might possibly have something to do with the fact that the union’s current head of communications, Michael Chessum, was a key political ally of former general secretary Matt Wrack. The two supported many similar causes and served together on the steering committee of the far-left pressure group Momentum. Was Chessum keen to spin the story in a way that was helpful to Wrack? We cannot be sure, but it is entirely legitimate to at least ask the question. It would be hard to believe that the union’s head of comms had no hand in the drafting of the story and headline.
One thing is certain: members are entitled to expect that the union’s head office does not manipulate the flow of information to them in the way it did with this story. The entire ‘hush money’ scandal has been damaging enough already. We need honesty, not spin.