Following exposés by both Guido and the Mail on Sunday into the activities of Jane Pilgrim, pressure is now mounting to make the practise of employing trades union officials full time on the taxpayer illegal. David Morris MP just raised this at today’s Health Questions:

“There have been press reports recently that money earmarked for frontline NHS services is being used by hospitals to pay salaries to Trade Union officials. Does my Rt Hon friend (Andrew Lansley) believe it is acceptable to spend taxpayers’ money on union hatchet people and will he order an urgent investigation.”

The reply came with the usual expectations of “behaving responsibly”. But Pilgrim’s activities did not go unnoticed in parliament and in councils around the country. Plates could well start to move on this issue soon…

Last week Guido revealed how Unison rep and former nurse Jane Pilgrim was depriving the public of a nurse in a frontline role at St. George’s Hospital in Tooting. Yesterday the Mail on Sunday exposed how she is also depriving families in need of  housing through the commune of which she is the head.  The Crescent Road Community consist of three dilapidated houses in Kingston upon Thames, where thirty “peace and love” activists live. They have ignored attempts to have them evicted and and are living there illegally.

Nurse Pilgrim is now subject to a double investigation at St Georges, including one into why she was using the image of one of the hospital’s directors to promote her private consultancy without his knowledge or permission. Guido hears that she is in rather a lot of trouble…

The TaxPayers’ Alliance have found 2,493 Pilgrims across the public sector, union officials, paid not to provide the service they represent, but instead do political activities that should be funded by the unions. Without having to pay their staff, the unions can spend the money raised through their subs on other things, like keeping the Labour Party solvent. They’re costing us millions and, as last week’s investigation showed, they’re completely unaccountable. Do you know a Nurse Pilgrim in your hospital or school? Tell Guido…

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:

Jane Pilgrim works on project to improve efficiency and productivity & patient care on wards. She is not a member of the Labour Party—
Mary Maguire (@MaryxMaguire) April 14, 2011

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.

Remember our good friend Nurse Pilgrim? She’s the taxpayer-funded, full time Unison union-worker who made up details of a meeting with Lansley that she didn’t attend. Well it appears that whilst we pay for her to work for a trade union she’s lining her pockets in the private sector. Not content with depriving St George’s Tooting of a frontline active nurse, Jane Pilgrim has her own private consultancy firm “Pilgrim Way“:

“Pilgrimway” beleave [sic.] that Staff engagement and happiness produce productive and successful companies and services. Our consultant “Jane Pilgrim” is an award winner in partnership working and has been able to lead successful staff engagement projects, in the NHS to improve customer care ,work relationships and create great places to work.

We are able to offer packages designed for your needs:-
Consultation
Team Building
Customer Service Training
Staff Engagement workshops”

Guido’s first thought was “do St George’s know about this?”. Well he hopes this is news to them, but has a feeling they tacitly endorse it. Especially given Alan Thorne, the hospital’s absurdly titled and salaried “Director of Transformation” (paid around £95 – £100,0000 last year) is featured in a photograph on the site:

Thorne and Pilgrim work closely together at St Georges. Do they have a private professional relationship too? Given she’s a burden on the taxpayer full-time, one fellow Unison figure pondered to Guido how this outside consultancy is possibly compatible with her day job? Sadly Nurse Pilgrim is still not talking to Guido. Time to go above her head…

Jane Pilgrim is a “nurse” at St George’s Hospital Trust in Tooting, though hospital insiders say she has not worked on the front-line for a very long time. That is because she is the a full time  Unison representative, paid for by the taxpayer not to do her real job. A TPA report into this loophole that the unions exploit said that St George’s was employing 1.6 union officials at a cost of £43,000 to the taxpayer.

So what does Nurse Pilgrim do for this money? Well her CV describes her as “Award Winning Partnership Project Leader”, or in other words, exactly the sort of fodder that should be cut. When Labour were in power this “Award Winning Leader” (and Labour party member,) spent most of her time organising “Staff Safaris” to John Lewis and Wagamamas to “motivate, empower and inspire“, while we picked up the tab. Now she has a new role…

Since May Jane has popped up all over the place attacking the government, she even threatened to go on strike, not that she’s a real nurse. On Monday Jane got a whole headline and piece in The Standard:

Nurse brands Andrew Lansley ‘a liar’
A nurse and Unison representative for St George’s Hospital today branded Health Secretary Andrew Lansley a “liar” for promising frontline employees they would be protected when he met staff before the general election. Jane Pilgrim, 53, a nurse for 33 years, said: “Mr Lansley visited the hospital and told us we would not be affected. He lied to us.”

But the problem for Jane is that some people have a better memory of event in late summer 2009. Sources at the hospital have confirmed that Jane “boycotted” the meeting for political reasons, refusing to meet the then Shadow Health Secretary. Those that did attend say far from Lansley saying there would not be cuts, he infact stated that “he could make no promises and it would be up to local management”. Other people in the meeting have confirmed this version of events.

Jane and her guilty conscience were very sketchy about explaining all this on the phone until she had checked with the regional Unison bod Michael Walker. When Guido called back she point blank refused to engage and threatened an “investigation”:

Could that be because she lied to the Standard?

So here we have a taxpayer funded official, with a pointless job, who has a track record of defending pointless spending, using her position to accuse her ultimate boss of being a liar based on a meeting which she boycotted because she was so politically partisan she could not bring herself to attend.

Why should the public pay for a union smear operation?

UPDATE: Unison’s delightful head of press Mary Maguire seems to awknowledge she doesn’t have a leg to stand on:

@MrHarryCole go away—
Mary Maguire (@MaryxMaguire) April 13, 2011

‘Fraid it doesn’t quite work like that Mary.

Another day and another overblown absurd outburst from a union baron. In a great spot by James Kirkup the TUC’s delightful Brendon Barber thinks the Big Society will turn the UK in Somalia:

“The most worrying thing about the Big Society is that Prime Minister truly believes that polices of slash, burn and sack will make all our lives better, and not just for those for whom he is planning tax cuts.The logic of this is that his ideal society is Somalia where the state barely exists.”

Over to John Rentoul and his eternal Questions to Which the Answer is No…

Word reaches Guido of yet another party invitation that got lost in the post. George Osborne last night hosted mulled wine and mince pies for his favourites. There was no jelly on offer, but those who happened to attend Dave’s meeting next door with the TUC leaders earlier in the day noticed the tiny austerity mince pies offered to the brothers were minuscule in comparison with the hefty, bonus filled, jumbo pies offered to friends.

Hitting the unions where it hurts.

The new boss of Unite, Len McCluskey has put both Dave and Ed in a tricky spot this morning. His Guardian piece is a boorishly militant call to arms, suggesting that the unions need to take a leaf out of the student protesters book and start smashing stuff up. Well he doesn’t quite say that, but phrases like “preparing for battle” “assault” and “developing our resistance” don’t leave much to the imagination.

Obviously this doesn’t bode well for the Prime Minister’s planned frosty beer and sandwiches  with the union bosses today, but the meeting was hardly going to be sweetness and laughter anyway. It’s Miliband that the article really backs into a corner though. Explicitly slamming New Labour for keeping Thatcher’s union controls and hinting that they want him to shift to the left, Ed has been forced to come out this morning against the very people who gave him his job:

“The language and tone of Len McCluskey’s comments are wrong and unhelpful and Ed Miliband will be making that clear when he meets him in the near future.”

So the purse-string holding unions that Ed schmoozed over the summer are teaming up with the extreme left “Coalition of Resistance”. The more centrist Parliamentary Labour Party, which on the whole didn’t vote for Ed, remains unconvinced by his performance thus far, as do big donors. Leaders of the Opposition need friends, not least on their own side.

When the going gets really tough, who exactly is Ed going to turn to for support?

Given the recession has financially crippled thousands of small businesses and seen pay freezes and cuts across the public sector, two people didn’t do too badly during the crisis. The outgoing Unite co-General Secretaries Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson will leave their jobs in charge of the super-union very rich men. Derek Simpson was on £196,497 if you add up car, salary, and perks etc. Poor Tony Woodley only managed to squeeze £135,330 a year out of the worker’s membership subs. Since 2007 they have seen a eye-watering 56% and 62% pay-rises respectfully, unheard of in the real world. Given that the average salary in the UK is somewhere around £25,000, the union-fat cat copy writes itself.

The newly elected Len “there is no such thing as an irresponsible strike” McCluskey is a Che loving militant-hardliner, who wears his man of the people credentials on his sleeve. If Ed Miliband wants to distance himself from the union that gave him his job he might have a bit of a challenge with this one, McCluskey was a big player in the BA strikes.

The real question though is will “Red Len” take a massive pay-cut before he mans the barricades and leads the charge?

Secondary picketing is illegal in this country. So why is the RMT turning out at the London Fire Brigade Union protest? Is Bob calling in the comrades?

Note the massive RMT banner…

It is interesting to note that 22 MPs are sponsored by the RMT including London MPs Dianne Abbott, Stephen Pound , John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. Will there be a wall of silence from these normally outspoken MPs? What role is Bob Crowe playing in these strikes?