Yet again the BPS is spending your money – despite its financial difficulties – on expensive barristers and KCs. This is taken from a press release published today (22 July):
The Employment Appeal Tribunal will this week (24 and 25 July) hear a landmark whistleblowing claim that could ensure protections to over 900,000 charity trustees who might need to blow the whistle on corporate governance failures within the charities they oversee.
The claim is being brought by Dr Nigel MacLennan against the British Psychological Society (BPS) in a legal case that could extend the same protections that workers and employees enjoy under whistleblowing legislation to the many thousands of trustees, school and NHS governors, and other volunteers who play a vital role in upholding proper corporate governance standards and ethical conduct within the organisations they have duties to serve and protect.
Dr MacLennan was a Trustee and President-Elect for the BPS at the time of his expulsion in May 2021. Following his appointment, he uncovered serious concerns of corporate governance failings within the BPS, including potentially illegal practices, which he reported to the Charity Commission.
The Charity Commission made the first of four regulatory interventions into the BPS within 11 days of Dr Nigel MacLennan taking office, based on his evidence. Despite this, Dr Maclennan was expelled and dismissed from office by the BPS, causing profound damage to his reputation and career, and significantly impacting his mental health.
Dr MacLennan took his claim to an employment tribunal which found that he was not protected by whistleblower legislation and he was not a worker of the BPS.
In bringing this appeal, Dr MacLennan and his legal team will argue that he entered into a contract with the BPS and was fulfilling his legal obligations in blowing the whistle, and should therefore be protected. They will also argue that Dr MacLennan and other trustees are protected from reprisals for blowing the whistle under Articles 10 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The significance of this case has been underscored by the Judge of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, who, in allowing the appeal, made an order that the Government be invited to intervene in this case because of its significant public interest implications.
Just to be clear, this Appeal is to clarify an important legal principle rather than an appeal against Dr MacLennan’s expulsion by the BPS. Should the Appeal be upheld then it will allow him to take to BPS to court to contest his (in our view, unjust) expulsion (for more on this see previous blog posts Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).
What may be news to you is the first sentence of the fourth paragraph. How many of you knew that the Charity Commission (CC) made four interventions? This is truly astonishing. It’s even more astonishing that the CC did not take any further action. However, why I raise this matter here is the fact that, as far as I am aware, this information has not been made public before. In its usual tight-lipped secretive manner [see here] the BPS has kept schtum and not any of of this has been shared with the members – the people on whom the SMT relies for their high salaries. I cannot imagine that the CC recommended that their intervention and the subsequent actions (if any) should be kept quiet. I would hope that the CC would have encouraged (if not made it mandatory) for the BPS to keep the membership fully informed. But no – a total comms blackout. We don’t expect anything from The Psychologist, of course, which seems to take perverse pride in not reporting on Society matters of critical importance to the membership.
We will keep you updated (although the judgement of this appeal is unlikely to appear immediately) on any other previously unknown information which comes out.
Peter Harvey
Blog Administrator
psychology UNREDACTED 
BPS Member 1986-2021. Nothing about the BPS’ conduct regarding NMacL surprised me, based on the previous 35 years; it merely ensured my exit from being associated with the BPS. The BPS bureaucracy labelled my decision not to renew my membership as a ‘resignation’, & offered me free life membership, which I declined. It felt like an inverted Groucho Marx moment.
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As a friend and admirer of Professor MacLennan, I have followed closely and with horror how the Society has destroyed, by means of a kangaroo court comprising of their trusted sympathisers, the brilliant career of this honest and courageous man for their own purposes, and how the membership have been kept in the dark. I am hoping that this week justice will prevail and Nigel will be vindicated based on the true facts of the case.
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