https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nmc-scandal-2m-payouts-rising-ftp-backlogs-fake-shawn-goldberg-ywqfe/
Shawn Goldberg on linkedin has posted this expose showing what is really meant between the lines of the latest NMC minutes from council meeting this week.
If you can't access - here is the article:
NMC Scandal: £2m Payouts, Rising FtP Backlogs, & Fake Anti-Racism Policies
Shawn Goldberg
EDI Executive Coach | Race Relations Advisor | Transforming Health & Social Care Organisations Through Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
May 21, 2026
I have just subjected myself to the 192-page dossier from the The Nursing and Midwifery Council ’s Open Meeting on May 20, 2026. I am writing this with a profound, visceral disgust.
If anyone still harbors the delusion that this regulator is undergoing a "cultural transformation," this document will shatter it. What is buried in these pages is not governance; it is a confession of moral bankruptcy. It is an administrative elite meticulously documenting their own staggering hypocrisy and legally rubber-stamping the financial and psychological abuse of the nursing workforce.
Let us tear away the sanitised, focus-group-tested language. Here is a forensic dissection of the absolute depravity Paul Rees MBE and his executive cabal formally approved this week.
1. THE HYPOCRISY TAX: £2 Million for Golden Handshakes
The Evidence: Page 35, Section c)
The Note: "The Assistant Director, Finance responded that the figure for severance payments as part of the efficiencies programme was approximately £2 million."
The Outrage: Read that and let the nausea set in. This is the exact same organisation that just ruthlessly bullied through a 19.2% registration fee hike, pleading total financial destitution. They told nurses professionals who are literally relying on food banks to survivethat the regulator was going bankrupt.
Yet, buried in the small print, they casually admit to hemorrhaging £2 MILLION on severance payouts for departing staff. They squeezed £143 out of an exhausted, traumatised frontline simply to fund the golden parachutes of their own exiting management class. This is not a regulatory fee; it is institutional extortion. They are making the working-class bedrock of the NHS England finance the luxurious exits of the bureaucratic oligarchy.
2. THE WAR CHEST: Weaponising Your Fees Against You
The Evidence: Page 100, Section 2.6.4
The Note: "Office of the Chair and Chief Executive: the overspend of £0.5 million for this financial year was significantly driven by an uptick in litigation... complex EDI/freedom of speech issues, complex complaints/concerns raised under Raising Concerns policy..."
The Outrage: This is perhaps the most chilling admission in the entire 192-page packet. The Chief Executive’s office blew half a million pounds over its budget to hire external lawyers to fight their own staff and whistleblowers.
When they say "complex EDI" and "Raising Concerns," they mean they are funneling your registration fees into an aggressive legal defense machine to crush discrimination claims and silence those who expose their toxic culture. They are literally taking your money and using it to buy legal immunity for their abusive managers. The sheer arrogance of admitting they underbudgeted for how many people would sue them for discrimination is breathtaking.
3. THE PURGATORY FILES: The Backlog is Worse Than Ever
The Evidence: Page 70, Fitness to Practise Dashboard
The Note: "As of end of March 2026 [the caseload] stood at 6,725, our highest recorded caseload over the past two years... 4,384 cases or 65 percent of our open cases were outside of the timeliness target."
The Outrage: For months, Paul Rees has stood at podiums and fed the press an absolute fairy tale about "turning the corner" and "speeding up" the Fitness to Practise labyrinth. It is a fabricated illusion.
The backlog has not shrunk....it has swelled to a two-year high of 6,725 cases.
Sixty-five percent of these cases are languishing beyond their own deadlines. This is 6,725 human lives suspended in an administrative wasteland. We know that this exact punitive delay has driven professionals to suicide. Yet the board views these ruined lives as mere data points on a bar chart, actively patting themselves on the back for "managing customer contact" while the human toll mounts in the shadows.
4. THE DECADE OF DELAY: Postponing Equity to 2035
The Evidence: Page 124, Regulatory Fairness Target Outcome Measures
The Note: "Eliminate disproportionate outcomes, based on ethnicity, in nursing and midwifery education and training by 2035."
The Outrage: 2035.
I had to read the date three times to ensure my eyes weren't deceiving me.
Black and minority ethnic students and professionals are facing structural, career-ending bias right now. And the NMC’s majestic, groundbreaking objective is to maybe figure out the education disparities in nine years?
This is a masterclass in bureaucratic cowardice. By pushing the deadline to 2035, the current executives guarantee they will be comfortably retired, collecting their inflated pensions, long before anyone can measure their failure. It is a hollow, insulting pantomime designed to indefinitely delay taking any actual, disruptive action against systemic racism.
5. THE TOOTHLESS PANTOMIME: Anti-Racism is Optional
The Evidence: Page 149, Section 24
The Note: "We are clear that these are Principles, not standards... By their nature principles are not mandatory..."
The Outrage: And here is the ultimate betrayal. After endless, agonising "listening events," after dragging traumatised Black professionals into focus groups to harvest their pain, the NMC finalized their highly publicised "Anti-Racism Principles."
And buried on page 149, they admit the truth: None of it is mandatory.
It has zero enforceability. Care providers and universities can read these principles, throw them in the shredder, and face absolutely no regulatory consequences. They exploited the lived trauma of marginalised nurses to author a document that is nothing more than polite advice. It is diversity-washing at its most cynical and repulsive.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Reading this document is an exercise in realising how deeply the profession is held in contempt by the people paid to regulate it.
They fleece you to pay off their departing managers. They use your cash to fight whistleblowers in court. They leave thousands to rot in a two-year-high disciplinary abyss. And their commitment to anti-racism is a non-mandatory suggestion scheduled for the next decade.
The current leadership is not fixing the system; they are optimising it for their own survival. Health Secretary’s refusal to put this rogue entity into special measures is a dereliction of duty.
We must stop lending our credibility to their "consultations." We must stop participating in their optic engineering. It is time to tear down this facade and demand the immediate removal of a cabal that views the nursing profession as nothing more than a resource to be exploited.
https://www.nmc.org.uk/about-us/governance/the-council/council-meetings/council-meeting-20-may-2026/
#NMCExposed #RegulatoryFailure #AccountabilityNow #NursingCrisis #ThePurgatoryFiles #EndTheCharade