The former health and social care minister and chief executive both failed to comply with a the disclosure of all documents referencing the island’s now former medical director when asked to do so by an employment tribunal.
Dr Rosalind Ranson obtained all the relevant documents, mostly in the form of emails, only after submitting a subject access request.
Today (Wednesday) sees the continuation of the disclosure hearing, focusing on how documents were, or in this case weren’t, supplied when requested.
Representing Dr Ranson, Oliver Segal QC, read from a sworn affidavit from a civil servant which revealed that Ms Magson had personally checked the emails being supplied to the tribunal before they were submitted to the Attorney General’s Chambers.
Some of these documents proved that the case originally put forward by the DHSC, that Dr Ranson was only an interim appointment ahead of the creation of Manx Care, was a baseless lie.
In one such email, this was confirmed by Andrew Foster, the chairman of Manx Care, where he said that Ms Magson had decided Dr Ranson ‘didn’t have the skills and experience’ for the role of medical director for the health body.
In the case of Mr Ashford, he had originally told Government Technical Services that the only correspondence he had regarding Dr Ranson were with Ms Magson, which meant they were already available to the tribunal.
Despite Mr Ashford’s own secretary offering to check his emails to confirm this, the former minister declined.
However, a subsequent future check of his emails revealed that Mr Ashford had failed to disclose emails between himself and two other people, one a Dr Crellin, in which he spoke highly of Dr Ranson and the other from Douglas East MHK Claire Barber, who asked him ‘have I missed something?’ when Dr Ranson was not announced as the new managing director for Manx Care.
Mr Segal said these emails only came forward because Dr Ranson was able to secure them herself.
The hearing is scheduled to reconvene noon today.
You can see a full report of this week’s hearings in tomorrow’s Manx Independent.