The St George’s Hospital Trust was quick to distance themselves from Jane Pilgrim when Guido spoke to them a moment ago. And it’s not hard to see why, take what one St George’s employee said this morning:

“It’s a disgrace that somebody who is in full time ’employment’ with the NHS, is trying to open up a nice little side line that is probably a conflict of interest. I object as a taxpayer to her actions. She is not competent enough to run a piss up in a brewery let alone run a business and this is from personal experience. She must be stopped otherwise she will make St George’s Hospital a laughing stock in the NHS. Does David Astley CEO know about her activities?”

Despite paying her salary, they stress that she acts on behalf of Unison and not them. This didn’t stop her dressing up with a stethoscope for pictures and being happily described as a “nurse” by The Standard though. Guido has put the following questions to their communications team:

• Given St Georges Trust are the ones that pay Ms. Pilgrim were you aware of her outside consultancy?
• Do you see any possible conflict of interest with her outside consultancy and her job at the hospital?
• Were St George’s Trust aware that Director of Transformation Alan Thorne was featured on the consultancy website?
• Does he have any financial interest in the consultancy?

Guido is patiently waiting on a reply…

Unison have been deeply unhelpful, despite the damage their taxpayer-funded representative is causing them. This is the closest we have got to a comment from them:

http://twitter.com/#!/MaryxMaguire/status/58470357564260352

Then why lie about being a nurse? Is that the same efficiency drive that saw “staff safaris” to Wagamamas and John Lewis? It seems Mary Maguire, Unison’s head of press, should go back to Jane Pilgrim and ask her why she is active in the Kingston and Surbiton CLP. Last October she was writing about how important it was for Labour to win the next election. Typical holding response though, that does little to address the accusations of dishonesty.

UPDATE: St George’s Tooting are investigating Unison “nurse” Jane Pilgrim. No comment until tomorrow though it seems.