Investigating Committee, Feb 09

There are 555 food days arising from Fitness to Practise activity.
And £300,000 is spent each year on hiring the shorthand writers.

I am now attending various committee meetings at the HPC to find out what is talked about at strategic level.

Most people have not really thought about the implications 0f the HPC - why would they, when there are so many other things to do in life? Those people who are forced to think about the HPC tend to leave it in the abstract realm of a TLA and at most associate it with the figure of the CE, Marc Seale. Well, the HPC in practice is a very different thing. I know of people who make appointments to visit Marc Seale in the belief that they will speak to a man and persuade him with reason. None have yet succeeded. There is little reason to think that they would. First of all Mr Seale is placed in a highly particular position. This organisation did not come into existence through the desire of a man, not the demand of the market nor of local people, nor from the exigencies of practice - it came into existence through a highly particular, and alarmingly flawed, political will. Discussing things with this CE is not going to work, because, in effect, he has been set up in a highly constrained position and given the power, in effect, to print money.

There is a second thread to take into account: the organisation is large, has a history, and is stitched into the fabric of life in many different ways. There are sandwich makers and stenographers makers who depend upon it for their living, for example.

By going along and observing I have two different aims. One is to allow readers to realise that this organisation supports the living and the careers of a lot of real people (and won't disappear overnight, nor give up its wish to make money). Second is to gradually reveal what the day to day business of the place really is. I have been an ethnographer in my time, and it is this that is giving me an orientation.

In the meeting there were some familiar faces around the committee table, and a nod of recognition from Anna van der Gaag. I sat behind another familiar figure - Diane Waller, chair of the C&P PLG - and was surprised that she said nothing at all throughout the whole of this meeting. I recognised the new Secretary, and was pleased to see Kelly Johnson, head of FTP, who I had read about at the Tribunal. I was surprised at how young and inexperienced she looked.

The committee meeting itself is, of course, based on a large number of documents which are numbered more than named, eg: 100026AC20090205Investigating-enclosure7-complaintsliterature, and 100026AA20090205Investigating-enclosure5-workplan2009-10. Teams of people are employed full time to compile and take care of these documents. Panel members are probably paid a fee to read them and to come to London to discuss them. Little by little, I shall find a way through too, and try to reveal something which renders them accessible and perhaps gives a fresh view.

Where to begin? I'll take two points of humour.

There's an HPC CPD DVD, and will be an HPC FTP DVD, several people laughed quietly at this, perhaps enjoying the poetry in the letters.

The second thing that made members laugh was the idea that the figure for costs invoked by a High Court Appeal had been increased, which means that someone failing to win an appeal against an HPC decision would be obliged to give up several thousand pounds. One panel member punched the air with joy and Kelly Johnson giggled.

A little less funny is the fact that by the end of the month the Kent Police will have delivered their special 'escalation procedure' training programme which is aimed to help the FTP employees in their business of conflict management.

So let's turn to something more comforting. Sylvia works on reception, and has done so for more than 13 years. She has seen many refurbishments in her time, as well as the re-naming of the organisation and changes in its relation to the public. She told me that her desk has been moved around the building. First she sat in the basement, then in the heart of the building, now she sits at this nice little number in a double locked chamber right next to the glass front door. Before, visitors and public were trusted to come in and find their way through the corridors. Now they are forced to obey magnetic locks, wear large name tags, and wait to be escorted wherever they want to go.

There are other important things to say about the meeting, and relate to the planning, forecasting, and expansion that formed a bulky and central document. I'll have leave it here for the moment, and return to the task later on.