---

Nursing & Midwifery Council

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention and I will deal with his point at the end of my contribution. The trade union representative went on to say:"““My member has also, as I have seen, experienced a lack of due process and investigations and equally annoying a failure of natural justice. This has been compounded by a perverse use of individuals under a grievance investigation to carry out investigations into staff who are the grievance source.””" That is absolutely unprecedented. A former member wrote to me, saying:"““We are hoping to make a contribution to a body run with integrity and competence while we would have confidence in its leadership. Sadly this is not the case. The NMC is a fundamentally dysfunctional organisation where the priority is on maintaining the status quo at the expense of proper transparency and integrity, where funds are being misspent and where trustees are being systematically prevented from doing what they are supposed to do.””"