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Goolding Enquiry

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"This is an inquiry into the death of Mr Douglas Tickel, and the culture and practice of the dissemination of confidential information between political parties and the public media." - Lord Goolding

Goolding inquiry

The panelists of the Goolding inquiry. Left to right: Matthew Hodge, Baroness Sureka, Lord Goolding and Simon Weir.

The Goolding Inquiry was an inquiry launched to investigate the suicide of nurse Douglas Tickel, as well as the wider culture of leaking confidential information within the government.

Initially intended to look into the causes of Tickel's death, the scope of the inquiry was widened to scrutinise the awarding of government PFI contracts. Following a series of controversial leaks, including the illegal obtainment and release of Tickel's personal records, the inquiry was expanded again to cover the entire culture of leaking within the government.

The investigation was led by a panel of four members which was chaired by Lord Goolding. The other panelists were Baroness Sureka, Simon Weir and Matthew Hodge. Its proceedings commenced on Monday 18th June 2012.

As a result of the inquiry, it was uncovered that Malcolm Tucker had illegally obtained Tickel's medical records and leaked them for political gain, resulting in his arrest.

Background[]

Douglas Tickel was a key-worker nurse from London. He was divorced and had a history of mental health health issues, inluding depression and bipolar disorder.

At some point prior to season 4, the government had commenced a new policy, led by Peter Mannion, which involved selling off key worker housing in order to pay off PFI debts. Tickel was one of the key workers who lost his home. Despite being offered alternative accommodation, Tickel decided to protest the policy by taking up residence in a tent. By the first episode of season 4, he had already been protesting for three weeks.

Tickel's protest was preventing the policy from being carried out, therefore the decision was taken to evict him. The date for the eviction was set for a bank holiday Monday, which was seen as the best way to conceal the affair from the press. However, when the bailiffs arrived at the tent, they discovered that Tickel had disappeared. Gleeful that the road block for their policy was now gone, the Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship proceeded as planned. It was later discovered that the reason for Tickel's disappearance was that he had committed suicide using the exhaust of his car.

At the time of Tickel's death, the DoSAC offices were largely empty as Mannion, Emma Messinger and Stewart Pearson were away on a team building exercise in Kent. Glenn Cullen and Phil Smith were at work, with the latter overseeing the eviction of Tickel. Fergus Williams and Adam Kenyon were also in the office having a preliminary meeting with economist, Tara Strachan. When news of Tickel's death broke, the atmosphere in the office became heated and arguments between Smith, Cullen, Williams and Kenyon ensued. Upon hearing the news from a friend who worked for Reuters, Terri Coverley came into work to help manage the situation.

Slide

Peter Mannion and Stewart Pearson on the slide.

With chaos breaking out at DoSAC, Mannion was still in the countryside where there was no phone signal. As a result, he and Pearson remained completely unaware of the brewing storm. Eventually, Smith managed to contact them through the receptionist at the team building centre, asking them to turn on their phones. Without any signal in the building, Mannion and Pearson were forced to climb to the top of a nearby children's slide in order to improve the connection. After being updated further on the situation, they returned to London.

Mannion, Pearson and Messenger eventually returned to the office and found a chaotic scene, with the department being hounded by calls from the press. It was at this point that Smith noticed a photo receiving widespread attention on Twitter which showed Mannion and Pearson standing on the children's slide at the time of Tickel's death. As a result, the Prime Minister decided that Mannion should not make any statement to the public, instead giving the responsibility to Junior minister Fergus Williams.

In response to events, Leader of the Opposition Nicola Murray called for an inquiry into the events leading to Tickel's death. Unbeknownst to Murray, this was actually a ploy engineered by Malcolm Tucker designed to oust her as leader. Tucker's plan involved persuading Glenn Cullen to leak an email from two years prior which showed that Murray, then Secretary of State for Social Affairs, and Ben Swain had both supported the same policy which had led to Tickel's death. In the end Murray had only decided to ditch the policy because it would have created a conflict of interest with Albany, a PFI company which her husband James worked for. Tucker's plan bore fruit, with the leaking of the email prompting the resignations of Murray and Swain.

Realising that Murray's call for an inquiry would see him blamed for Tickel's death, Peter Mannion decided to call for the investigation to be widened to include the issue of PFI contract procurement. Knowing that Murray's husband worked for a company which had been granted a government prisons contract, Mannion hoped that a widened inquiry would shift some of the damage onto her.

Keen to absolve themselves of responsibility for Tickel's Death, Fergus Williams and Adam Kenyon engineered a leak through Glenn Cullen which was designed to prove that they had long since opposed the policy of selling off key worker housing. Their plan was for Glenn to send off a copy of an older email in which Fergus had stated that "the sell-off of key worker housing is possible the worse idea since the invention of theatre". Alongside Terri Coverley, Cullen sent the email to Geoffrey, the editor of The Guardian. Not realising that he was supposed to have redacted the older emails on the chain, Cullen inadvertently leaked the entire sequence of emails which contained a series of insulting messages sent from members of DoSAC which were targeted at Mr Tickel. These emails poked fun at Tickel for his mental health issues and joked about his homelessness.

While many at DoSAC had assumed that Tickel's mental health issues were public knowledge, it was soon discovered that they had been illegally acquired by Malcolm Tucker, along with his NHS number, National Insurance number and his ex-wife's landline. Tucker had leaked this information as a way of discrediting Mannion and the government for evicting and bullying a man with a history of mental illness. Realising Tucker's plan to smear the government's reputation, Stewart Pearson attempted to hit back at his rival by informing Mannion that Tickel's health records had been illegally obtained. Mannion in turn contacted Alastair Leighton, a journalist at The Times, informing him of the leak in the hopes that the news would divert attention away from the brewing controversy at DoSAC.

However, Tucker and Pearson's attempts to out-spin each other ultimately failed. Now that several high profile leaks had occurred, the Prime Minister decided to call for a further widening of the inquiry's scope to include the entire culture of leaking within the government. Such a decision caused significant dismay in both the government and the Opposition, with both Tucker and Pearson particularly alarmed as they had been at the centre of events.

Witnesses[]

Individuals known to have testified[]

Individuals likely to have testified[]

The Enquiry[]

Findings and Repercussions[]


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