The MHRA recently confirmed in a reply to an FOI request submitted be me that they are currently running with 20% vacancies in licensing of medicines, including vaccines. I think that’s a safety management crisis. Let me explain why.
I retired in 2017 from a senior role leading three teams totalling 300 people. We licensed and purchased a wide range of safety critical products and monitored their safety in use. Our role was, essentially, the equivalent of MHRA and NHS Procurement. My rule of thumb for an ‘acceptable’ level of vacancies was 8%: people would stay in post for an average of three years and it would take about three months to recruit and have a replacement in post. Three months as a percentage of 36 is about 8%. Simple.
However, for reasons which are irrelevant here, there were times when my vacancy rate ran to 10-15%. I would have sleepless nights because safety management is a labour-intensive business and I was legally accountable for the safety of the products. Cut corners or miss something and there’s a risk that the products injure or kill people. We had to de-prioritise or defer non-essential tasks (e.g. financial reporting) to maintain safety management standards.
Worse, at one point, the vacancy rate exceeded 15% with all the indications that it would increase. I decided I had no choice but to hand back the safety delegations I had accepted. My rationale was that the organisation was not giving me the manpower which, in my professional opinion, I required to stay safe. To cut a long story short, I gave the Board a choice between withdrawing certain products from use and redeploying that manpower or they had to personally accept the legal consequences of continuing with all products. It doesn’t matter here what happened next – there just comes a point when lack of manpower compromises safety. I considered the ceiling to be a 15% vacancy rate and the Board agreed.
So MHRA’s 20% vacancies represents a safety management crisis in my book. And that’s before you factor in some other things. First, post-Brexit, the MHRA has additional workload because it is now responsible for regulation of all medicines in U.K., not the European Medicines Agency. Secondly, they have a lot of extra work in hand to improve safety management to meet the recommendations of the Cumberlege Report. Thirdly, earlier this year the MHRA stopped being self-funding (a Trading Fund), reverted to being funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, had its funding reduced and had to cut 300 posts. I don’t know how many of those were in medicine Licensing and Pharmacovigilance, but just Google “MHRA funding reduced” and see what other commentators thought about it at the time!
All in all, I think the 20% vacancy rate in MHRA’s licensing of medicines represents a safety management crisis. I would love to know what Dame June Raine, the CEO of the MHRA, thinks about that and what she and the Secretary of State for Health are doing about it.
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If you feel threatened by a group of ladies carrying out a vigil on behalf of a lady raped and murdered by a policeman then maybe you’ve made the wrong career choice? But what other job in the UK offers a psychopath the opportunity to indulge their blood lust against innocent, defenceless civilians? Maybe these poor threatened coppers could go and volunteer to join Putin’s army?
“Maybe these poor threatened coppers could go and volunteer to join Putin’s army?”
If this is sarcasm it misses the point. If you are serious you have a faulty understanding of the Ukrainian situation.
So Putin’s army are not brutalising innocent civilians?
Innocent civilians are brutalised in all conflicts. The argument made by Russia is that they’re aiming to stop the brutalisation of innocent civilians in the east of the Ukraine, by demilitarising and denazifying the country. Worth remembering that this is after eight years of attempts to resolve diplomatically, during which thousands died in indiscriminate shelling; very well documented and not really in dispute.
While there is always the chance that elements in any military ‘go rogue’ and commit atrocities, it is not in the Russian state’s interest to cause unnecessary suffering in a country that sits on their border. So I believe them when they say they are trying to avoid killing civilians. They are not trying to conquer the country, despite what western talking heads say. They don’t want it – they just want it to not be a threat to them, which it categorically was and increasingly so.
I doubt any of these coppers would last an afternoon in Putin’s army. What you and many others seem not to realise is that Russians feel existentially threatened by the West and for good reason. They have been looted, undermined, humiliated, ignored, interfered with, attacked via proxies, blamed for things they had nothing to do with, vilified, lied about, deceived, and disrespected for the entire post-Soviet period. They have had enough; it’s a catastrophe that Ukraine is now feeling the brunt of this, but ultimate responsibility lies with the criminal gangsters in Washington, who have only ever seen Russia as a target for exploitation. Those days are over.
I haven’t read the article in full so these comments are based on the above synopsis.
Given the utter stupidity of the comments quoted by various members of the police gang members I seriously wonder if their mental faculties had been properly evaluated prior to employment.
A large crowd of predominantly women gather at a vigil to remember another woman who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a police gang member and some women direct verbal anger at the attending police. Perfectly understandable.
Clearly the most senior copper in attendance did not have sufficient intelligence to tell his gang to back off which would have been the most sensible course of action. Oh no, the vigil had become an anti police protest. What the firkin hell did the police expect?
A gang of police surround a crowd of peaceful women mourning the death of another woman and then voices are raised! Plod didn’t see that coming? Good grief.
A crowd of women are surrounded by a gang of police who decide their vigil has become an anti police protest and who decide to wade in and make arrests.
Of course there are bad apples but Sarah Everhard was FAILED by the police who recruited the murderous Couzens. His psychopathic nature had not been detected during recruitment so the anger of the protesting women is understandable.
The women were breaking C1984 rules.
FFS.
Some senior coppers should have lost their jobs over this.
What a bunch of mendacious, petulant pansies.
Very well said HP. Especially the last sentence
Thank you CG.
Interestingly, as a teenager (nearly 50 years ago), I remember commenting to my dad that the two worst male bullies in our year had joined the police force.
My dad (born in 1918) said “it was ever thus!”
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