Before an inquiry report is published, the author will typically carry out a “Maxwellisation” process which offers those being criticised a chance to respond.
The extent to which changes are proposed and accepted by the author can prove controversial – and it’s part of why those calling for an investigation tend to make such a fuss about it needing to be fully independent.
As revealed by
HSJ in December, a draft review of a research partnership between The Christie Foundation Trust and pharmaceutical giant Roche outlined multiple shortcomings in how the project was handled, as well as citing deeper cultural issues within the trust’s research and innovation department.
December 21 2020, 9.19am
Sir, – Regarding Maaike Cook’s comment on the honourable and democratic outcome of Scotland’s 2014 Referendum (Letters, November 28).
My recollection is Scotland was cheated, with no honourable or democratic niceties by the Westminster Government, with their ridiculing, degrading and fearmongering language towards the Scots. Was it honourable and democratic for the Westminster Government to invite outside forces to interfere in the 2014 Referendum?
I have lived through part of Scotland’s turbulent political history and seen not only referendums lost, so I ask whether Maaike Cook, thinks all were lost through honourable and democratic means? Perhaps she can explain why Scotland has a devolved government, with limited powers, and why Westminster’s government followers sit within?
A hospital trust where 42 babies and 13 mothers died in 20 years had a culture of wrongly blaming parents, the former senior midwife leading an inquiry has told MPs today.
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust was condemned in an interim report by Donna Ockenden last week, highlighting a range of failures including not properly listening to parents.
Ms Ockenden told the Commons Health and Social Care Committee on Tuesday that there was a culture of blaming mothers and fathers, but also that the trust failed to get to the bottom of why babies died.
She said the trust had its own mechanism for dealing with complaints, which did not follow national guidance, and was only ever engaged when legal action was threatened or a complaint was made.
Credit: geert vanden wijngaert/bloomberg
SIR – I am the CEO of a small-to-medium enterprise that trades almost entirely in Europe. A hard Brexit holds no fears for us. Indeed, our market share in Europe continues to expand month by month. So I was astounded by the insipid helplessness of other CEOs (“What would a no-deal Brexit mean for business?”, telegraph.co.uk, December 11).
Here’s my advice to shareholders. Fire your CEO and the board if they haven’t already configured the business for a hard Brexit.
Fire them if they only offer products and services that are so unremarkable that they can’t withstand ordinary World Trade Organisation tariffs.
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Describing the current impasse in Brussels over Brexit the other day, the Prime Minister explained that ‘it was put to me that this was kind of a bit like twins and the UK is one twin, the EU is another, and if the EU decides to have a haircut then the UK is going to have a haircut or else face punishment.
Or if the EU decides to buy an expensive handbag, then the UK has to buy an expensive handbag too or else face tariffs’.
Not quite sure what this tells us about the parenting techniques of your average Brussels mandarin, but in any case it’s the wrong analogy, not least because it implies that Britain and the EU are closely related in the first place. Which is not true, and never has been.