IF Webinar Chaired by Keith Madeley MBE
Intelligence Forums Webinar on 8 April 2021 was chaired by Keith Madeley MBE with twenty three joining from across the country.
Our first speaker was Baroness Findlay a Welsh doctor, professor of palliative medicine, an Independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords, and a member of the All-party Parliamentary Health Group. She has been president of the Royal Society of Medicine and is a professor of palliative medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine, and a consultant at the Velindre cancer centre in Cardiff. In 2003 she proposed a bill to ban smoking in public buildings in Wales, three years before it was eventually implemented. She is a Vice President of Marie Curie, Patron of The Trussell Trust's foodbank network in Wales, and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
She is co-author of a book "Death by Appointment- a Rational Guide to the Assisted Dying Debate", and in March 2015, was awarded the Grassroots Diplomat Initiative Honouree for her vigorous champion to improving the care of dying patients. In conjunction with the Bevan Commission, she has also published a report "COVID-19 Caring for a dying relative at home.
Baroness Findlay highlighted two issues that have arisen from the COVID pandemic - Decisions around life and death; and some of the harms that have resulted from lockdown.
There has been speculation she said about blanket 'do not resuscitate' (DNR) decisions having been made for people over 80 yrs. old and those with learning difficulties, without their involvement. There had been no central policy on this, she assured us. Clear rules are followed, and any DNR decision must include the individual concerned, provided that they have the mental capacity. Only if this is not the case can a doctor decide for them.
She suggested that the meaning of a phrase like DNR lacks clarity. For example, it does not mean that water or pain relief should not be given, and while doctors must seek to avoid "futile" interventions, they should provide care and assistance when a patient is dying. She urged that we should all have the DNR conversation with our family to make our wishes known, and one of the audience highlighted the importance of doing so through a Lasting Power of Attorney.
Lockdowns have shone a spotlight on the use of alcohol, and alcohol fuelled violence. Alcohol violence has risen during the pandemic, she said, and there has been a dramatic increase in the calls to help lines from children, who often witness their parents fighting and one or other of them getting beaten up. Children can often only hide away, but for much of the pandemic they haven't even been able to escape to school. We should not forget that children who are damaged today will be managing tomorrow's world.
As Chair of the Commission on Alcohol Harms shenoted that despite alcohol being particularly addictive and damaging for a young brain, there is a significant bravado around getting drunk, and less stigma around being drunk and out of control. It is also a sad realitythat people from poorer social backgrounds are at greater risk of alcohol harm. Over many years, she said, therelative cost of alcohol has dropped while there has been a relaxation in licensing laws, and while pub landlords must by law refuse to serve a person who is drunk or disorderly, people are able to buy as much alcohol as they chose to drink at home.
Our next speaker was Rebecca Pick, the Chief Executive Officer of Pick Protection (PP), a security and investigation company which supplies wearable personal attack alarms, and lone worker security devices and other solutions to help keep people safe by guaranteeing a response. Since being established in 2014, PP has been named as one of the top 100 innovative and disruptive companies in the UK, and Rebecca has been invited to sit on one of the Prime Minister’s business councils.
Her idea for a wearable personal attack alarm came out of an incident which occurred while she was studying at Glasgow University. A neighbour of hers was dragged into another flat and assaulted while putting out the bins, but nobody did anything. Rebecca searched the Internet looking for what was available to keep individuals safe, and found it dominated with products to keep buildings safe such as intruder alarms and security systems, but little in the way of technical solutions for personal safety.
Her idea was for a device compact enough to wear on a bra strap, for example, that would send an alarm signal, which would elicit a guaranteed response. While still at university she won a competition through which a business angel encouraged her to pitch for investment to bring her idea to fruition. When she later did so, she won an investment of £60,000, for product development.
She soon recognised that her idea had applications in the wider market. Many employees, such as social workers, housing officers, security guards taxi drivers and even lawyers are lone-workers, may find themselves isolated in threatening situations while carrying out their jobs. She quoted a statistic that on average, one employee is attacked every 9 minutes, and reminded us that employers have a duty of care to protect their employees. PP has now developed a range of solutions to keep such employees safe. Security devices are continuously monitored and, an urgent call for help can even be promoted to the top of a 999 queue. PP now has £2.5 million of investment and is working with organisations such as the NHS the Red Cross and Unipart.
When asked what has been her most significant learning to date, she told us that the hardest part of running the business has been get the right people on board. PP's response has been to bring in employees on an interim basis so that each can determine whether the other is a good fit. Clearly this provides each with the opportunity to remedy the situation if they are not.
She also raised the vulnerability of small companies to “theft” of a patents by large companies, because small companies simply don't have the financial resources to take them to court to protect them.
Our next speaker was Rick Armstrong, Managing Director of Fisher King Publishing, who has a background in management consultancy, advertising, training and marketing along with over twenty years of experience working in the Middle East. He has been the CEO of a law firm specialising in matters of state based interests and is the founder of Mentor Group and is an inspirational speaker regularly presenting on topics such as business creation, motivation and leadership skills. He is co-author of The Little Book of Positive Thoughts and The Little Book of Visualisation.
He admits that he got into publishing rather by accident. While working in the Middle East he was asked by a new sponsor to help his 84-year-old, to publish her book. At that time Rick was producing pamphlets for British Airways and wanted nothing to do with publishing, but the sponsor was persuasive and his aged aunt was sadly dying from cancer. So Rick started to approach publishers becoming increasingly appalled by the lack of decency in their responses, but ultimately found an Indian company based in Dubai, which agreed publish her book.
Shortly afterwards he became involved with the Asif School for the Handicapped, where children who were often ignored by their families were dependent on the support of volunteers. Two such volunteers had produced a children’s book, "Ali Akbar the taxi driver", which Rick subsequently published through Windtower Publishing, and brought to the UK. The company later became Fisher King Publishing.
Publishing is an extremely difficult business and those who wish to enter it should really have a lobotomy, he joked. 6 million new titles are produced in English every year, so it is incredibly hard get a book onto the shelves. Even Waterstone's successful business model is not devoted to selling books - it principally stocks only best sellers and accessories, he said. Despite this and, contrary to popular belief, 80% of books are still in print form. The principal value of digital books is portability; the ability to carry large numbers of titles on a small device. However, today’s generation, he lamented, is more inclined to read social media on their devices than books, and all of this makes his market incredibly challenging.
As a consequence there has been a significant reduction in book sales. Ten years ago average book sales for a title would have been about 500, now it is under 300 books per title. Every year about 4 1/2 million books are self-published, and around 1 1/2 million traditionally. The good news is that small publishers can still compete with larger ones using organisations such as Lightening Source, which can print to meet a specific demand. Once the ISBN number has been fixed to a title, the covers and graphics set uploaded then if someone orders one copy, then a only a single copy will be printed.
Self-publishing is also a route for some authors but not for those who want to pursue the traditional route. He warned that if self-publishing has failed, then traditional publishers, and Fisher King in particular will simply not take the author on.
Rick says he is anyway blessed with good authors. People who he likes and whose books he likes. He has no time for Diva's!
Vanessa Lee is a Tax Partner based at BDO's Leeds office from where she leads the firm’s Private Client Services practice across the North of England. She has over 23 years’ experience of providing Personal Tax, Trust, Corporate and Partnership Tax advice having advised a diverse range of High Net Worth Individuals, their families and Trustees on their day to day and strategic tax affairs. She started her career at PWC and subsequently worked for both KPMG and EY. She is a chartered tax advisor, a fellow of the ICEAW, and has been voted one of the 50 most influential tax advisers in the UK.
Vanessa admits that tax may seem boring, but she loves her work, and it has given her the opportunity to work in different cities, companies and leadership roles, and for this she feels privileged. She has worked with a range of clients, both individual and corporate, which BDO has supported in their general day-to-day affairs and on other issues. Issues may be the achievement of a corporate liquidity milestone, or on the personal side, a relationship breakdown, or sadly a response to life changing news.
Vanessa also told us of a number of external appointments that she holds in both the public and private sectors. She has always been a supporter of charities and is on the development committee for the Princes Trust across Yorkshire and Humber. She also works for the NSPCC and was grateful to Baroness Findlay for highlighting the issues that have arisen for children as a result of the pandemic. She is Chair of the Finance and Investment Committee and a Lay Member of the Council for the University of Hull, (from whence she hails) and is keen to ensure that the University remains sustainable and retains its leading position. She is grateful for BDO's support for these activities which underlines its recognition that local people are on in its list of stakeholders.
Our final speaker was David Pryce, Managing Partner of Fenchurch Law, one of a handful of practices recommended by both Chambers and the Legal 500 for representing policyholders in insurance coverage disputes. David is individually ranked in Band 1 of Chambers & Partners for representing policyholders in insurance disputes and as a Leading Individual in the UK in that field by Legal 500.
He said that he is not normal - in having always wanted to be a disputes lawyer. For him it is a magical calling, and he distilled what he does into three basic areas of competence.
Firstly there is no substitute for having intricate knowledge of the rules of a really complex game. Simply knowing the rules does not get you there.
Secondly: You must be part detective and part storyteller. You need an ability to be able to sort out what is relevant and what is not.
Finally: You need to be a competitive storyteller. The winner is the one who tells the most compelling story.
It was at his first law firm, where he dealt principally with general legal disputes, that he appreciated just how much volume is driven by the insurance industry in the UK. He decided to move into the Insurance market and built up experience acting exclusively for Insurers. But he was unhappy with the constraint that Insurers put on their solicitors; if you work for an Insurer them you can never act against. As a consequence, 99% of solicitors act on behalf of Insurers!
Here he saw the gap in the market and in 2010 he scraped together £60,000 to establish a business that would act on behalf of policyholders. On day 1 then he had capital but no clients, and for these he looked to his background in the insurance market to build relationships with brokers. For the first 10 years this has been the focus of his practise, and has resulted in Fenchurch Law becoming the leading team for brokers.
Over the next five years he wants to move the firm to become the leading team overall; and from this base he expects to be able to roll out his services to other countries around the world which have the same insurer / policyholder inequality that exists in the UK.
He, too, recognised the challenge of getting the right people on board. In 2014 aware of the way Netflix had challenged traditional workplace rules in its business, Fenchurch, too, overhauled its employment philosophy. By giving staff the flexibility to work as they wished provided they delivered what was required, employees become self-selecting. Those who embraced this style of working tended to be the right fit for the business; others generally felt happier elsewhere.