Complaint Handling - McNally - Linda Clarke
The unlawful funding and representation of Lisa McNally, Sandwell Council’s Director of Public Health, in a failed legal action which cost the taxpayer in excess of £100,000 is dealt with elsewhere. But there is some overlap here between the two subjects and the dates of communications are relevant here.
On 3rd January, 2021 a formal complaint was submitted to SMBC by Julian Saunders that Lisa McNally was involving herself in political debate and discussion when she was, by law, in a politically restricted post.
Having unlawfully decided to fund and represent McNally in a legal action against Saunders SMBC sent a Protocol Letter of Claim to him on 11th February, 2021.
At the end of February/beginning of March SMBC started a disastrous legal action against Saunders whose Solicitors applied to the High Court to strike out McNally’s malicious action as having no prospects of success. The application was listed for a hearing in London on 21st June, 2021.
At least four Solicitors at SMBC (Tour, Price, Lynch and Maher-Smith) were acting in concert to “support” McNally’s case (as detailed elsewhere and were confident that they would win the case and/or financially ruin Saunders in the process.
On 22nd February, 2021 Linda Clarke, who purports to be a Solicitor, sent the following response to the formal complaint of 3rd January, 2021.
“Dear Mr Saunders,
David Stevens has asked me to respond to your formal complaint against Lisa McNally, Sandwell’s Director of Public Health.
You begin by making allegations that Ms McNally has breached Regs 6 and 7(i) of the Local Government Officers (Political Restrictions) Regulations 1990. Your assertion is based upon her Tweet about teachers, school and childcare staff being prioritised in relation to the Covid-19 vaccination programme. As you are aware, in order to fall within those two regulations, the “speaking” or “written work” needs to, “intend to affect public support for a particular party”. Having reviewed the Tweet in question, I cannot see anything that indicates any intention, either expressly or implied, that meets this criteria. The Regs have therefore not been breached by Ms McNally.
You go on and make further allegations about Ms McNally regularly communicating with “virulent anti-Tory journalists” etc., but you provide no evidence in support of this. I do not think that it is incumbent on me to respond to such allegations where no evidence has been provided and where it appears to be a malicious and unjustified attempt by you to discredit her.
I would further advise you that if you are dissatisfied with this response, please let me know and I will progress it to stage 2 of our complaints procedure.
Kind regards
Linda”
It is highly improbable that Clarke was unaware at this stage of the pending litigation against Saunders. The merits of the actual complaint are immaterial here (and in the High Court McNally stated that whilst she is in a politically restricted post the law does not apply to her personally as she has a “duty” to speak out against what she perceives to be defects in [Tory] Government policy. And so Clarke took the opportunity not only to dismiss the complaint but to be gratuitously offensive in doing so, accusing Saunders of being “malicious” and seeking to “discredit” McNally - two themes of the pending litigation.
As with other SMBC lawyers - they do like to insult people and then sign-off “Kind Regards”!
I replied to Clarke on 22nd February, 2021, copying in Chief Executive David Stevens (subsequently sacked by SMBC):
“I strongly object to the tone of your email.
You have not asked for further evidence. The two journalists are Jane Haynes and George Makin.
I strongly object to the words that my complaint is a "malicious and unjustified attempt by you to discredit her.
Are those your words or those of the Chief Executive?
Would you care to repeat those words in public?”
Bearing in mind that Clarke sent her insults when she must have known legal action was imminent. She was quick to respond on 23rd February, 2021:
“Thank you for your email. I note that you are dissatisfied with the response that I sent you. As I said, you can request to escalate the Stage Two. I would advise you that you must specify the reasons for wanting to proceed to Stage Two. Simply stating that you are unhappy with the response received or just exercising the right to escalate to the next stage are not justified reasons to initiate a Stage Two investigation.
Here is the link to the Council’s Complaints Policy to assist you:
https://www.sandwell.gov.uk/downloads/file/3742/comments_complaints_and_compliments_procedure
Kind regards
Linda”
Saunders responded making Clarke’s original offensive tone the subject of a complaint in itself:
“I wasn't commenting about the response (yet) I was complaining about your insulting and abusive language.
Can we now log that as a formal complaint in its own right please (unless you were simply quoting the Chief Executive in which case please log the complaint about him).”
(It was obvious, by this stage, that David Stevens himself was heavily involved in the McNally conspiracy.)
The McNally hearing took place on 21st June. SMBC’s unlawfully funded QC was very poor on the day but the conspirators obviously fancied that they would still defeat the strike-out application. Thus Maria Price, one of at least four Solicitor conspirators in the McNally affair but who clearly did not perceive any professional issues in dealing with this matter herself, wrote this on 28th June, 2021 before the Court judgment was given:
“This matter was passed to me to review by David Stevens. I note that you have been allocated a single point of contact but, I will deal with you directly in relation to this matter.
You have requested that a formal complaint be made against Linda Walker for her dealing with another complaint that you made regarding a Council Officer, Lisa McNally.
You alleged that Linda’s dealing with your complaint used insulting and abusive language when she stated your complaint was not substantiated with evidence and “appears to be a malicious and unjustified attempt by you to discredit her” (referring to the council office concerned).
In considering the complaints procedure, Linda’s findings were clearly in relation to your complaint regarding the Council Officer. You were provided with an opportunity to appeal the stage one findings but chose not to do so.
The complaints procedure is explicit that “a complaint that has been previously investigated, responded to and concluded” will not be considered under the complaints procedure.
That said I have reviewed the correspondence between Linda and Yourself and the language used.
I am sorry that you feel that Linda’s correspondence was abusive and insulting.
In relation to whether the language used was abusive I find no evidence to support this assertion.
I then considered whether the language used was insulting to you. Having reviewed the conclusions I can appreciate why they may not be the conclusions that you were seeking but this does not mean that the conclusions were unfounded or insulting in nature.
Whilst making no finding in relation to the original allegations you raised I have considered the language that was used by Linda and I find that she was entitled as investigator to find that that the allegations appear to be malicious and unjustified in the absence of any evidence been presented to substantiate them. As such I will be closing this matter.
This now completes my review of this matter and I will not be progressing it any further.
Maria Price”
Price actually condones the words used by Clarke! There is no way she was in anyway “independent” in dealing with this supposed investigation and she features regularly in the dossier being prepared on her and Surjit Tour at:
https://crowmultimedia.blogspot.com/2021/12/monitoring-monitoring-officer-case-study.html
On 16th July, 2021 the High Court struck out McNally’s malicious and unlawfully funded. The McNally conspiracy, in which Price herself was directly involved, collapsed.
Once again a supposedly proper investigatory process was improperly handled by Tour’s team due to an ongoing vendetta against Saunders, and infected with bias.
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