Secretariat

The Woodford Scandal involved the suspension and subsequent collapse of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, (“WEIF”).

After a number of bad investments regarded as outside WEIF’s mandate and the scope of an equity income open-ended fund, WEIF hit liquidity problems. After multiple regulatory breaches Neil Woodford engaged in significant financial arbitrage, seemingly to hide WEIF’s problems. WEIF was suspended in 2019 by its authorised corporate director, Link Fund Solutions, and closed shortly afterwards.

In 2023 Link reached agreement with the FCA on a highly controversial Scheme of Arrangement, promoted by the FCA. The Scheme was approved by the High Court and two group litigations already underway against Link had to be dropped. The FCA/FOS thereby refused retail investors being able to access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. With investor capital losses of £1.09 billion and further estimated £270 million lost return on capital up to the Court approval in 2023, this was one of the largest financial investment scandals in the UK. In 2025 the FCA fined Woodford £5.9 million and WIM, currently insolvent, £40 million, (appeal pending).

Ian has extensive lived experience regarding this matter as he and his wife are victims of the scandal.

Nigel Cairns brings an analytical, evidence-led perspective to issues of financial regulation, justice, and parliamentary accountability, grounded in direct lived experience of systemic failure.

He is currently involved in a long-running dispute (since 2008) with a major UK bank, arising from contested classification of secured lending (despite a FOS decision) and the consequences that flow from it. That experience has led him to examine, in detail, how legal, regulatory, and administrative systems interact in practice - particularly where disputes are never resolved on their merits but are instead foreclosed procedurally.

His areas of focus include the operation of Land Registry conclusivity, the practical boundaries and limitations of the Financial Conduct Authority and Financial Ombudsman Service, and the wider constitutional architecture through which Parliament delegates authority to regulators and courts while retaining responsibility for system design and correction.

Nigel’s contribution is not case advocacy, but pattern recognition: identifying where lawful rules and processes, taken together, produce unfair or unjust outcomes for citizens and small businesses. He is particularly interested in how complexity, fragmentation, and institutional deference combine to defeat access to justice.

Colleagues and parliamentarians can expect two things from engagement with him: first, insight from someone who has seen where systems break in real life; and second, clear, structured explanations that make complex regulatory and legal issues intelligible and actionable.

Authorised Push Payment Fraud occurs when a person is deceived or tricked into authorising a payment from their bank account to an account controlled by another person, where either that person is not the person they intended to pay, or the payment is not used for the purpose they intended.

Published reports indicate that there have been c.200,000 cases of APPFraud, with losses of c.£500m, every year for the last few years.

In respect of Regulation, it is important to understand that if a Customer authorises a payment in accordance with PSR2017, then the bank is obliged to process that payment within a defined time period in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

If a Customer claims that they have been the victim of an APPFraud then their bank will consider a claim for reimbursement under either the CRM Code (May 2019 to October 2024) or the FPS Reimbursement Requirement (since 7 Oct 2024).

If the bank declines the claim for reimbursement, then the Customer can take their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.