More openness and honesty?

An article in The I  reveals how the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) apparently spent almost a quarter of a million pounds redacting information about patient safety campaigner Mr James Titcombe.

Mr Titcombe’s son Joshua died from a treatable infection in 2008 and his father fought for an investigation into his death and subsequently became a committed patient safety campaigner. His activities clearly concerned the NMC who appear to have been monitoring information gathered about his speaking engagements and social media use for ‘internal purposes’.

When Mr Titcombe asked what information the NMC held on him the NMC reportedly instructed law firm Fieldfisher to assist with his request, finally sending him some heavily redacted internal documents. A subsequent Freedom of Information request revealed the costs of dealing with this request was just under £240,000.

Whilst NMC registrants may be staggered by the costs of this exercise, the real question is what exactly the NMC were saying about Mr Titcombe that required such heavy redactions.

Mr Titcombe is quoted as saying “This is the latest in a long running pattern of behaviour in which the NMC seems to be going to extraordinary lengths to defend the indefensible rather than adopting an open and honest approach to learn from the past”.