Investigation confirms foul play on RCN no-confidence petition

Data security firm Dionach, which was commissioned by the RCN to investigate the matter, has found that up to 570 of the 1,072 signatures may have been attached to the petition without the individuals’ consent.

It said that the culprit behind the fraud was probably a “third party”, determining that it was "unlikely" to be the petitioners themselves or a current member of staff at the RCN.

The petition was launched in protest of the RCN’s decision to recommend its members accept the latest NHS pay deal in England.

It called for an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to be held, and for a vote of no confidence in RCN chief executive and general secretary Pat Cullen, as well as other members of the college's executive team, council members, and pay negotiators.

In its report outlining the findings of its investigation, seen by Nursing Times, Dionach said the "likely source" of the information used to fraudulently sign the petition was another EGM petition that was lodged against the RCN in 2020.

Dionach said the “majority” of individuals whose names appeared on both petitions confirmed to its investigators that they did not sign the 2023 petition.

The report did not make a conclusion on who was behind the fraud but noted that a “large number” of individuals had access to the 2020 petition data.

It also flagged concerns about an unofficial RCN Facebook group which required members to submit their RCN membership number in order to join the group.

Among its recommendation, Dionach said the RCN should work with the organisers of the 2020 petition to further investigate how the fraud came about.

It also urged the RCN to devise a better and more secure way for members to run EGM petitions, and to promote awareness among its members of the risks of sharing their membership number and other personal information.

In addition, the college was told to review and tighten its “access control processes” – the privileges provided to individuals to access information within its digital systems.

Responding to the report, the RCN said it would commission an external team to contact those who may have had access to data from the 2020 EGM petition to try and “identify who was responsible for the fraudulent activity”.

“We’ll also seek to establish whether there are any irregularities with the 2020 petition data,” said the RCN.

More widely, it said a resolution would be presented at its upcoming annual general meeting in July on changing the rules related to how an EGM can be called.

In addition, the RCN said it would “seek a new approach to the use of petitions that does not permit any repeat of this misuse of members’ personal information”.

Ed Freshwater

Also responding to the report, Ed Freshwater, the nurse behind the 2020 petition, said the evidence suggested that his petition was not the only source of the fraudulent data, and that involvement of RCN staff had not been ruled out.

He said all of those who he submitted the completed petition to were either employed or elected members of the RCN, and that the verification process had raised no concerns, to his knowledge, about the validity of that petition.

He said he was still waiting to be contacted by the RCN about the matter.

“The report recommends that the RCN make contact with the 2020 EGM petition organisers; it’s astonishing that this didn’t occur to them in the first place and, at the time of writing some 24 hours after the report was published for members, still hasn’t happened,” said Mr Freshwater.

Meanwhile, the 2023 EGM petition that was deemed invalid by the RCN due to the fraudulent petition is currently being re-run with extra scrutiny to verify the signatures.

The EGM Organising Committee, which is running the rebooted 2023 petition, also responded to the latest update from the investigation with scepticism.

It said the RCN had declared the first petition invalid with unusual speed after its submission, and had already established, before Dionach started its investigation, that approximately 600 names had been falsely added.

“It therefore seems odd to us that Dionach are saying that it was not RCN staff even though many RCN staff have access to previous petitions and have a motivation for sabotaging the EGM petition calling for a vote of no confidence in the general secretary and executive team,” they said.

It called for the full version of the report – rather than the executive summary – to be published.