Staff asked to 'falsify and forge' documents

Published on Monday 22 February 2010 22:02

SENIOR management at a quango responsible for providing services and equipment at Scotland's health boards ordered staff to falsify, forge and create documents ahead of an external audit, an employment tribunal has heard.

Officials at National Services Scotland (NSS) – a division of the NHS answerable to the Scottish Government – told employees to "do what you have to do" in order to "fill the gaps" in files relating to corporate contracts, it is alleged.

In what was described as a "retro-fitting" exercise, one former manager at the organisation said she was subject to an internal investigation after telling her staff not to carry out the "inappropriate" and "illegal" activities.

Debbie Selkirk, 32, who is claiming unfair dismissal against NSS, said senior figures were left "very angry" after she raised objections to their requests.

The tribunal heard how even on the day auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers were in NSS offices preparing for the audit, staff were being told to doctor records.

Ms Selkirk, who worked as a category manager at NSS from 2004 until last year, told the tribunal that an internal audit conducted a few weeks before the visit of PWC had "highlighted various gaps".

She said: "The instruction was that we had to fill these gaps and do what we had to do before the external audit. They called it retro-fitting that consisted of making up documents that did not exist, forging signatures on documents we hadn't sent out to health boards to sign… there was all sorts of activities going on."

She said that Jim Miller, strategic sourcing director at NSS, specifically told staff to "retrofit the process", a request also made by Barry McGann, the sourcing manager. When she asked if that meant adding signatures to documents, she was told it did.

When Ms Selkirk made clear her reservations, she said she was given no reassurances. "I told Mr Miller and Mr McGann I did not want to do that, and I had told my team not to. Mr Miller was very angry."

Asked by her solicitor, Paul Santoni, if her employers accepted her concerns, Ms Selkirk said Mr Miller "was quite adamant he wanted these particular actions to be done".

On 14 November, 2008, the day after PWC started the external audit, Ms Selkirk was summoned to a meeting with Sandy Agnew, compliance director at NSS. She said she was informed that she was being suspended over allegations that she had "falsified data" and "not followed process".

Ms Selkirk was eventually cleared of the allegation, while she was told that the failure of "not following process" applied across her department, and would be tackled with further training.

On returning to work she learned that NSS was not going to look into complaints she had made about a breach of confidentiality and the suspension process, as they were "unrelated".

Ms Selkirk pressed ahead with her grievance claim, after which, she said, Colin Sinclair, the interim procurement director, confronted her with a telecoms contract. He told her there had been a signature forged on the document, which Ms Selkirk said she had never seen before. She told the tribunal:

"He was effectively telling me to resign, to go."

Ms Selkirk resigned from NSS on 20 January last year. The tribunal continues.