Bank penalty charges campaign
In late 2004, I starting fighting against Britain's High Street banks to help unfortunate customers recover penalty bank charges. Over the next couple of years, I was joined by other individual campaigners in the fight against the banks. During this period, I acquired the title of Bob the Bankbuster (courtesy of the Sun newspaper).

Until July 2007, the campaign was immensely successful. In the first half of 2007 alone, Britain's banks paid out over £700 million to its customers; I personally helped individual consumers recover over £300,000. We campaigners had successfully used the laws of the land and the Courts. It was probably the most successful grass roots consumer campaign of all time.

We received no help from organisations such as the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) despite the fact that the OFT had a statutory duty to ensure fair treatment for Britain's consumers. We certainly received no help from Her Majesty's Government. The whole thing was an embarrassment to the establishment.

Then at the end of July 2007, the OFT stepped in. They and the banks decided to fight a "test case" in the courts. Immediately, all claims in the court system were put on hold and the banks stopped paying out. So, instead of helping the campaigners who had been so successful, the OFT, in collusion with the banks, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Financial Ombudsman, took away the campaigners' only weapon: they disarmed us.

The test case proceeded at a snail's pace through the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords (now rebranded as the Supreme Court). Finally, in November 2009, it was decided in favour of the banks.

After mulling over the judgment for a few weeks, on 22 December 2009, the OFT unconditionally surrendered to the banks.

This was a gross betrayal of British consumers by the OFT. It was a shameful day for justice. (Note: the OFT was dissolved in 2014.)

Interestingly, just over 10 years later, the Financial Conduct Authority, somewhat out of the blue, intervened and forced all the high street banks to cease charging their extortionate unarranged overdraft fees and to reduce the fees charged for unpaid items.

It had taken a long time and, for many years, the least well-off people in this country suffered not just 10 years of austerity but many of them also suffered from the crippling penalty charges imposed by Britain's high street banks.

It is nice for once to be able to praise a body such as the Financial Conduct Authority.

For further details of the campaign, see bankbuster website.

Cormac health and safety incident
Whilst I was a Cornwall Councillor, a resident in my division called Joe (not his real name) was an employee of Cormac. He worked as a highways safety inspector. On 16 December 2016, Joe was working alone in the Grampound Road depot. An incident happened that resulted in Joe sustaining life changing injuries and he has never returned to work at Cormac and he will probably never work again. He was medically retired from Cormac in spring 2018.

No health and safety investigation was carried out at the time of the incident. Five weeks after the event, Cormac filed a RIDDOR report with the HSE but that report was a work of fiction. I only found out about the incident several months later and, after my intervention, a so-called investigation took place within Cormac. Cormac refused to release that report to me. Cormac lied to the HSE about the incident on two more occasions.

I had a number of meetings with chief executives of Cormac, the chief executive of Corserv, and the chief executive of Cornwall Council over a two-and-half years period trying to get Cormac to admit their failings over this incident and to apologise to Joe, but I was met with a wall of silence. It was clear to me that there had been a significant cover up within Corserv and this was condoned by the Cornwall Council chief executive.

On 9 March 2020, I presented a report to my Cabinet colleagues and I asked them to instruct the chief executive to put this matter right. The Leader had conversations with the chief executive but she point blank refused to do anything about it. That is why I resigned from the Cabinet in April 2020.

More details about the incident can be viewed on my legacy councillor website. It includes a number of postings that I made updating readers of what was happening, or not happening, about the incident.

Further updates on the case are posted on the News page of this website. See news items between March and October 2021.

The final act in this sorry saga was that a QC, commissioned by Cornwall Council and Corserv (the parent company of Cormac) and paid by them the sum of £50k, produced a report that essentially admitted that Cormac had, on three occasions, given false information to the Health and Safety Executive, but that it was not deliberate and nobody was to blame!