News

To Discipline or Not?

April 30 2019

The recent decision of the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority to strike off Emily Scott, a junior solicitor, for being involved in misconduct while a trainee, only belatedly raising her concerns as a whistleblower after she left, raises, albeit tangentially, the difficult question of when – or if – it is ever right to discipline an employee for misconduct if they are also a whistleblower about that misconduct.

In this case, Ms Scott felt unable to report clients being defrauded by her firm while she was a trainee.  She was involved in perpetrating the frauds on the instructions of the partners, the Disciplinary Tribunal finding her conduct to have been “deliberate, calculated and repeated”.  It was only after she had left, some two years after the conduct in question, that she reported the fraud to the SRA who then took action against the partners of her firm and, controversially, her.  The Tribunal reached its decision on Ms Scott despite accepting that she had been young, a trainee and had been “deceived, pressured, bullied and manipulated” by the partners into both carrying out the fraud and covering it up.  The fact that she did not use the confidential route open to her by reporting the matter to the SRA was a factor, as was the fact that part of the conduct involved misleading the regulator when it sought answers.  

Ms Scott feels that she has been punished for – eventually – doing the right thing, with the Tribunal refusing to accept her mitigation, even while expressing sympathy for her.  It is easy to feel sorry for her: in her first job, anxious to impress, worried about her prospects if she refused or left and feeling bullied.  In such circumstances, it is not hard to see how someone can justify to themselves what they are doing and convince themselves that they are still an honest person despite doing dishonest things.  

Still, the SRA took the view that a solicitor, even a trainee one, is rightly held to a very high standard and there can be no excuse for dishonesty.  Our system of justice depends on its practitioners being utterly trustworthy.  

Will such a decision nonetheless lead to unintended consequences?  Misconduct is often perpetrated by the most junior employees being made to do something wrong by superiors who seek to keep their hands clean.  So it will often be those most involved who have the best knowledge of misconduct which should be reported and stopped.  If their own careers will be lost – as Ms Scott’s has been – will this encourage those with the relevant knowledge to speak up?  The SRA is, understandably, reviewing its rules in light of this case in order to ensure that it gets that balance right.  

Ms Scott was not retaliated against by her employers for being a whistleblower.  She was disciplined by a regulatory authority, which has different and wider concerns.  Nonetheless, all employers will likely come across whistleblowers who have themselves been involved in bad behaviour and who may seek to protect themselves from the consequences of such bad behaviour by blowing the whistle, sometimes at a late stage when an investigation has already started – or is about to.  Ensuring that a whistleblower is not retaliated for speaking up but is not also given a free pass against being disciplined for misconduct requires the most careful of judgments.

But the moral – however harsh it may seem – is that, ultimately, a professional – or someone aspiring to be one – is responsible for their own actions, that they need to do the right thing even if this prejudices their personal position and that acting dishonestly but saying to yourself “I’m not a dishonest person” may be comforting but is still a dangerous self-deception.  It is our actions that make us what we are.

Similar considerations arose in the case of Dr Bawa-Garba, a paediatrician convicted of manslaughter over the death of a young child from sepsis, suspended from practice, then struck off and recently reinstated.  There are, however, some obvious differences between the two cases:-

  1. The doctor was open about – and admitted – her mistakes immediately and was convicted in court.  The initial medical disciplinary panel felt, however, that it was not just her mistakes which led to the child’s death and that these wider failures were a reason why her additional punishment should be suspension, during which she could do the necessary training to learn from those mistakes and improve her professional competence.
  2. It was the General Medical Council which sought to strike her off on the basis that her standards as a doctor were so far below those to be expected that she should not be allowed to practise.
  3. The concern within the medical community at this decision was that this would lead to the wrong consequences, both for doctors and patients.  Criminalising individual mistakes would be more likely to lead to cover ups and a failure to learn from problems.  It would have a chilling effect on health professionals’ willingness to be candid about errors and thereby learn what to do better next time.  There was also significant concern that the wider failings which had been identified – lack of staff, poor supervision, inadequate resources, poor note-keeping by others – were being ignored in favour of placing the blame, unfairly, all on one individual.  
  4. Most obviously, the consequences of the wrongful behaviour were much more serious in the doctor’s case than in Ms Scott’s.  Yet it is Ms Scott who has lost her career and the doctor who will continue to practice.

Unfair?  Superficially maybe.  Is gross incompetence in a doctor less bad than dishonesty in a lawyer? Whatever the doctor’s failings, she was not dishonest; indeed, her very openness about her failings made it easier for her to be convicted and disciplined.  A lack of knowledge or competence is something which is capable of being remedied.  

Whereas integrity and honesty and the courage to say no when asked to do the wrong thing go to the heart of what it means to be a lawyer.  If they are missing or capable of being so easily subverted, what else is there?  

And while the work culture in which a person operates matters, often significantly, and frequently needs improving, it should never be an excuse for behaving without integrity.

 

Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash

Compare and Contrast

April 20 2018

Today’s announcement by the FCA and PRA about the draft warning notice to Barclays boss, Jess Staley, seems to bring to an end (assuming the level of the fine is not contested, not necessarily a given) the lengthy investigation into his conduct when he twice sought to uncover the identity of an anonymous whistleblower, contrary to the rules, good practice and, one hopes, Barclays’ own internal procedures.

It’s noteworthy that the FCA and PRA are saying that Mr Staley had not acted with sufficient care when he set out to uncover the identity of the whistleblower.  Unfortunate wording since it implies that it was his ineptness in doing so that they are criticising rather than the fact that he did not realise that it was quite improper for him to try at all, let alone twice.  But the regulators have shied away from any suggestion of impropriety since calling into question Mr Staley’s fitness and propriety would have called into question whether he should or could continue in his role at all.

Always tricky to get the tone right when criticising those at the top.  So we must wait for the final public notice to see the basis on which the regulators have come to their decision.

Elsewhere Sir Alan Parker has resigned his position at Save The Children two weeks after the Charity Commission announced an inquiry into how the charity had handled sexual harassment claims dating back to 2012 and involving senior executives, including the former CEO and policy director.  As with other similar claims, it is not so much the initial allegations themselves (bad as they may be) which have led to grief but the way they were initially investigated and how those raising concerns were treated.  Better procedures and more training will undoubtedly be required but, even more importantly, what is really needed is an understanding that ignoring the messenger is always the wrong thing to do (no matter how mixed their motivation may be), a lesson others in public life might also usefully learn. As is hoping that the problems will go away if ignored.  They won’t.

Still, if banking has not yet got it right, it is at least better than the NHS, despite the recommendations of the Francis Report following the events at Stafford Hospital, as this programme describes.  Worth listening to just to hear a lawyer who had dealt with both NHS whistleblowers and ones working in a bank say, with more than a touch of incredulity in her voice, that a bank  – “a bank!” – had got it right about how to treat a whistleblower and investigate their claims.  Compliments must be taken where they can.

 

Photo by James McGill on Unsplash