“My position is if we can present the Lord Chancellor [Lord Irvine] with something worthwhile and sensible, without committing him to anything, we would be rather happier with that than if we sat around doing nothing,” he said.However, the project’s development has been far from smooth.Last month, the Law Society advised firms not to take part unless the board met their concerns, which it will raise at a meeting at the board’s London headquarters this afternoon.The prime concerns are that the costs of disbursement, such as medical and other reports, are to come out of fixed fees for cases and that the board is not offering any payment for the extra administration work firms will be required to do for the researchers. The board, which hopes to start the project in June, is now waiting to see whether the new Labour administration will want to continue with it, given its promise to review legal aid funding.
The board’s chief executive, Steve Orchard, said it was waiting for a steer from the Government but would continue to work on the pilot contracts. Hostile, angry, dismayed, appalled – just some of the comments of lawyers invited to take part in a legal aid block-funding pilot project. The Legal Aid Board has invited 145 solicitors’ offices to take part in a two-year research project into different ways of funding the green-form scheme, which enables low-income clients to seek advice about a case. For him there will only be a symbolic return to work.A short walk into the GCHQ site within the next few weeks will be followed by a long stroll into retirement.. We always knew in our heart of hearts that we would win our rights back, but if we had been told it would take 13 years, the prospect would have been daunting indeed.”Mr Grindley, along with 13 colleagues, was dismissed on the order of the Thatcher government after refusing to give up union membership in return for pounds 1,000.The ban on trade unionism at the centre, which monitors radio communications around the world as a part of an Anglo-American intelligence agreement, followed the expression of concern by US spymasters.A series of strikes in Whitehall in 1981 over pay led to industrial action at GCHQ and the US security agency used its diplomatic muscle to secure the union ban.According to some sources, the American agency has now bowed to the inevitable reinstatement of union recognition, but has registered its keenness to see a prohibition on stoppages.Mr Grindley insists that essential services have always been maintained during industrial action – a contention supported by Sir John Nott, the then secretary of state for defence, who said the industrial action had “not in any way affected operational capability”.About 10 of the “refuseniks” are expected to refuse re-employment, some because of retirement, others because they have embarked on other careers.While senior management at the complex and their US counterparts are seeking a “no-strike” deal, a less restrictive formulation is likely to be agreed in negotiations which will follow Mr Cook’s announcement.Ironically the reviled GCHQ Staff Federation – the organisation set up in the absence of orthodox unions – is likely to be subsumed into the PTC civil service union.Alas for Mr Grindley, the election of a Labour government has come a little late.

“We are elated,” said Mr Grindley, “people in GCHQ are already wearing union badges.”It’s been a mixture of tenseness, tiredness, excitement and endurance. Much to the irritation of the intelligence community across the Atlantic and the erstwhile prime minister, the new Labour government is to offer Mr Grindley and his friends re-employment at the GCHQ intelligence network based in Cheltenham.
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to make the announcement tomorrow as part of the debate on the Queen’s Speech.It has taken Mr Grindley hundreds of speeches, scores of visits to union conferences, years of stubbornness and, more importantly, the election of a Labour government to achieve his goal. I didn’t know how to get help.” In the end, he “exploded” and walked off the ward, resigning. After setting up a lobby group with another nurse to highlight the stress nurses are under, he also started training to be a psychiatric nurse, and says he is now always open about his psychiatric history “My .. work at the hospital is now just a memory I feel I have a new life now.”. After 13 years, Mike Grindley, trade unionist, obsessive and master of Mandarin Chinese, is about to thwart the wishes of the mighty National Security Agency of America – and the even mightier Baroness Thatcher. often tend to be more punctilious and do not take the odd days off that others might.”‘I didn’t know how to get help’Before his breakdown, Ian Payne (right) felt that as a nurse he could not turn to anyone at work for help over the stress he was feeling: “The image of nurses is that they cope … There are still stereotyped fears where we write people off as a generalisation instead of seeing them as an individual on their own merits.”From work done in the US, employers’ most common fears are that those with a mental illness would be unreliable.

Ms Sayce added: “The evidence is that those who are employed do not have any worse fitness records .. The long-term disabled … On both these occasions I said that my two-and- a- half-year absence from employment was due to a term spent in prison I was accepted for the first and shortlisted for the second. Whenever I have been truthful about my psychiatric past I have never been accepted for a job.”Liz Sayce, Mind’s policy director said: “Employers have begun to realise that someone who is blind can be an excellent employee and do not want to waste their potential talent. There is nothing like this among people with a mental-health problem. Around 58,000 such people are employed in total.Those with a mental problem fare worse than those with physical disability when it comes to unemployment.

Of those available for work, nearly four out of 10 were unemployed, compared to 20 per cent of those with a visual impairment, 15 per cent with a hearing impairment or 26 per cent with chest or breathing problems.An earlier survey for Mind which questioned 800 people with mental-health problems found 34 per cent said they had to resign or were dismissed and more than half had concealed their psychiatric history. A man diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder said: “On two occasions I lied when I applied for jobs. More than 30,000 people with long-term mental-health problems may be concealing their psychiatric history from employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination or losing their jobs. People with a mental illness are less likely to have a job than if they are blind, deaf, have breathing difficulties or a learning disability.