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Nursing & Midwifery Council

Matched only by myself. The Nursing & Midwifery Council is a public body that is also registered as a charity. It regulates almost 700,000 nurses and midwives. In line with its principle of self-regulation, it is funded by those whom it regulates. Nurses and midwives currently pay a mandatory annual fee of £76. That has increased by 77 per cent. since 2007. I will return to that point. Members of the NMC's council are responsible for its governance and are charity trustees. They have a general duty of care to ensure that the organisation is properly run, that what it does accords with its purpose and that action is not taken beyond its constitution. There is a particular duty to ensure that its moneys are used only for legitimate purposes. As trustees of a charity, they must ensure that there is no misuse of funds, for example, through supporting activities that are outside the body's defined activities or by incurring excessive costs that are not commensurate with the scale and needs of the fulfilment of its objectives. As a self-governing regulator, whose purposes are public protection and the public interest, the NMC should be run with integrity, competence and transparency. Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case. It appears to be a fundamentally dysfunctional organisation where the priority of those in control is to maintain the status quo at the expense of proper transparency and good governance. Its funds are being misspent and staff time is being misused. Poor financial management has resulted in nurses and midwives, who are already under financial pressure, being faced with nearly a doubling of their annual fees, which they must pay each year to be licensed to practise. Trustees are systematically prevented from doing what they are supposed to do. There appears to be an ingrained culture of bullying and racism as a means of preventing good governance in general, and in particular, any proper examination of what is going on. I will deal with those very serious allegations in detail. Sadly, since this matter has come into the public domain, there has been an attempt by the NMC to portray me as a man running a personal vendetta. That is not the case. I trained as a nurse and represented nurses as a lay and full-time officer for more years than I care to remember. I believe that I can recognise a serious issue when it is brought to my attention. The lack of governance at the NMC is a very serious issue that we, as parliamentarians, cannot ignore. I have six statements from former members of the council and its staff and one from a trade union representative who represented a staff member at the NMC. Those individuals live throughout the United Kingdom and I understand that other hon. Members have been approached by constituents with similar issues.