Boots stands accused of “trying to deceive the public”, after a letter sent to the Guardian purporting to be from an independent pharmacist was found to have been processed and extensively revised by the retailer’s senior executives.

Submitted this week by a self-described “independent pharmacist”, the letter takes issue with the Guardian’s “portrayal of Boots” for doing “damage ... to a profession I love”.

In an investigation published earlier this month, the Guardian revealed how managers at Britain’s biggest chain of chemists have been forcing staff to milk NHS schemes to increase company profits. The correspondent adds: “My plea is that some balance is put back into your articles.”

The letter was emailed for publication as a Word document. On opening, it turned out to have a string of edits, amendments and corrections left in as “track changes”. The changes were made by Laura Vergani, a vice-president at Walgreens Boots Alliance, the multinational company that owns Boots.

Extract from the letter that was revised by Boots executives.

The letter makes no mention of Boots’s involvement in its production, even though it repeatedly defends the company and the NHS schemes it has been exploiting for profit.



The Guardian’s investigation prompted a flood of letters from Boots chemists, who condemned the company’s working practices and scalping of the health service. Some even claimed that they had been driven to contemplate suicide.



The letter observes “within any large organisation such as Boots there will be people that engage in new ways of working and those that do not”.

When its writer, Nick Kaye, was contacted by the Guardian he initially denied that Boots had touched the letter. On being told that the changes and who had made them were visible, he said: “The only amendment I thought they added was the [publication] date of the story.”

The publication date was just one of 17 amendments made by Vergani, along with numerous deletions, corrections and spelling changes.

Kaye said he submitted the letter on 21 April to another senior executive at Walgreens Boots Alliance, Tricia Kennerley. It seems to have been passed on to Vergani, and edited the next day over what appears to be at least two sessions. The letter was submitted to the Guardian on 24 April.

Kaye claimed the only changes made were to his grammar and spelling – not to the content or the “ethos”.

“I am not good at comms,” the Newquay-based pharmacist said. “I am not an expert at national newspapers.”

Editing the letter was “a common courtesy,” said Vergani, the vice-president of external communications at Walgreens Boots Alliance, who described her work on the letter as “some small grammatical changes”.

“It’s totally normal … it’s a comms job,” she said. However, when asked how often a vice-president at the £60bn multinational edited letters from members of the public, she admitted: “Never.”

In the two weeks since the Guardian published its investigation, Boots has not submitted a response in its own name.

While Kaye does run his own independent pharmacy, he is also a member of Boots’s wholesaling group Alphega and in 2013 won its award for pharmacy of the year. Neither connection is mentioned in the letter.

“It looks as if Boots is trying to deceive the public,” said John Murphy, general secretary at the trade union, the Pharmacists’ Defence Association. The letter “appears to be part of a corporate campaign to undermine the many anguished accounts of working life at Boots, sent by pharmacists to the Guardian. Such an attack must call into question the integrity of those responsible for this letter.”

Other senior managers at the company appear to be changing their position on the Guardian’s allegations, judging by the latest memo to staff from its chief pharmacist, Marc Donovan. Where previous letters to staff have accused the Guardian of a “very specific and strong negative agenda”, this one accepts that “some of its [Guardian coverage] underlying sentiments may strike a chord with you”.

Referring to the newspaper’s evidence that NHS schemes are being milked for maximum profit by the company, Donovan writes: “All services must be delivered for the benefit of patients and not to meet a numerical cap.” He also directs staff to “a dedicated whistleblowing hotline”, although no phone number is provided.