In August, Dominic Adamson QC published his report about the Cormac health and safety incident, see report published.
Although Mr Adamson said that Cormac/Corserv had made false statements to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on three occasions, he concluded that all the false statements were the result of errors rather than of deliberately lies.
On the third occasion, Cath Robinson, managing director of Corserv, wrote a letter to the HSE in September 2019, giving the impression that Corserv were unaware of the fact that Mr Richards had a fractured skull when they had previously communicated with the HSE. Mr Adamson says that “the impression this letter gives is erroneous”. (Adamson report paragraph 171.) He goes on to say, “I am satisfied that the Managing Director of Corserv was not aware of appendix C (the e-mail dated 16 January 2017) when the letter of 17 September 2019 was sent.” And, at paragraph 172, "I was told by the Managing Director of Corserv that had she been aware of that e-mail she would have worded the letter to the HSE differently. I accept her account.” And he says, "it is clearly unfortunate that there was yet another inaccuracy in a Corserv/Cormac communication to that organisation."
However, Ms Robinson was aware of the email referred to in Adamson’s report because I had shown her it in papers that I presented to her in a meeting with her and Kate Kennally, chief executive of Cornwall Council, on 4 September 2019 before Ms Robinson wrote to the HSE.
In other words, when Ms Robinson told Mr Adamson that she had not seen the said email of 16 January 2017, she lied.
Furthermore, Mr Adamson should have known that Ms Robinson was lying because I had already him sent him various papers about the case including a copy of the papers that I had presented to Ms Robinson and Ms Kennally.
Mr Adamson’s astonishing leniency towards all the “mistakes” made by Cormac/Corserv is compounded by his own incompetence in not realising that one of the witnesses had lied to him.
I wrote to Ms Robinson twice giving her the opportunity to refute my arguments. She did not reply to either email but, on the second occasion, the company secretary of Corserv responded to say that, “we now consider the matter closed.” See email.
I wrote to Mr Adamson twice giving him the opportunity to refute my arguments. He responded to my second email by saying, "I do not consider it is appropriate for me to make any further comment.” See email.
In other words, neither Ms Robinson or Mr Adamson has attempted to deny the assertion that I made that she lied to him.
I have also written to the Leader of Cornwall Council, Linda Taylor, to the Deputy Leader, David Harris (he is also the portfolio holder responsible for the group of companies), and to Cherilyn Mackrory M.P. (in whose constituency Mr Richards lives) asking all of them to intervene and persuade the Council and Corserv to apologise to Mr Richards and to make an appropriate offer of compensation for the wrongdoing. All have failed even to reply to me.
I have now written to Cllr John Keeling, chairman of the Customers and Support Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee asking him to ensure that his committee looks into this matter. I will publish his reply when I receive it.