The dead Samaritans

ON 5 March, NHS chief executive Sir David “no accountability” Nicholson told the Commons health select committee that he always takes the concerns of NHS whistleblowers seriously and has always acted appropriately to investigate them when brought to his attention. Strange then that he should promote Dame Barbara Hakin to be his interim deputy when she is the subject of an ongoing GMC investigation triggered by the Eye (see Shoot the Messenger, Eye 1292) to ascertain whether she acted appropriately on the whistleblowing concerns of former Lincoln hospitals chief executive Gary Walker.

Walker raised concerns that enforced targets for routine care were harming emergency admissions to both Hakin and Nicholson, and was later sacked. Walker is due to reveal all to the health select committee on 19 March; but in appointing Hakin, Nicholson is putting two fingers up to whistleblowers everywhere in the NHS, safe in the knowledge that the GMC moves at the speed of a glacier, usually bottles important cases and that Hakin can simply remove her name from the medical register at any time to avoid accountability.

Nicholson claims he did not know that Walker had been gagged until recently, despite a whole

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The Times Thunderer Column, Friday March 15th 2013

Time to celebrate whistleblowing

The announcement by health secretary Jeremy Hunt that gagging of whistleblowers is to be outlawed caused more wry smiles than celebrations in the NHS. Such gagging clauses were made illegal by the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) in 1998, and very specifically in a Department of Health directive a year later. Assorted health secretaries have reminded the NHS that silencing legitimate safety concerns is illegal, but local managers desperate to avoid scandal have kept using them, in agreements drawn up by aggressive, NHS-funded lawyers. Yet no-one has ever been prosecuted for gagging whistleblowers. So why should Hunt succeed?

I applaud him for trying, but time is not on his side. On April 1^st, he will be completely powerless to act as control of the NHS is handed to Sir David Nicholson’s ‘independent’ Commissioning Board. Hunt’s plan needs a strengthening of legislation to succeed, but would still only apply to gags that are accompanied by payments signed off by the treasury. Locally agreed gags will remain hidden from view.

Of course, whistleblowers are under no obligation to accept a gag, or a silencing payment, but in over twenty years

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Nicholson Stays, Jesudason goes

David Nicholson should resign as chief executive of the NHS over the Mid Staffordshire scandal, but he won’t. Charlotte Leslie, the North Bristol Tory MP, has proposed an early day motion calling for him to go, with cross part support, but he won’t budge. The scandal happened under Labour’s watch, but the government owe Nicholson for keeping a handle on the money during Andrew Lansley’s disastrous health bill, and the next few years could be far worse. The market regulator, Monitor, has recommended Mid Staffs goes into administration, 25 more acute hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy and up to a quarter of Clinical Commissioning Groups may not be financially viable when they ‘go live’ on April 1. The combination of a bust trust and a broke CCG in the same area could quickly lead to another Mid Staffs. Can Nicholson ‘keep a grip’ on it before the election?

Just as problematic for the government is that the vast majority of NHS staff are not ‘engaged’ in its reform program, and many actively oppose it. Section 75 of the Health Act is supposed to explain how procurement should work, saying commissioning groups must “treat providers

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RETURN TO THE KILLING FIELDS

A chronicle of deaths foretold

Private Eye mid staffs final

The boss must go, NHS staff must step up

How many people have to die unnecessarily in the NHS before someone takes responsibility? It’s a question I pondered as Robert Francis QC delivered his verdict on the appalling care failings at Staffordshire hospital. Francis was angry at the collusion of anonymity, where clinical staff, managers, the trust board, the PCT, local health scrutiny committees, the SHA, the CQC, Monitor, the Health and Safety Executive, the GMC, the Royal Colleges and the Department of Health all passed the buck instead of preventing hundreds of undignified deaths. So what does Francis recommend for this complete absence of accountability? That no named individuals be held to account. Thirty years ago, Roy Griffiths famously said: ‘If Florence Nightingale were carrying her lamp through the NHS today she would be searching for the people in charge.’ I fear Robert Francis has been given the same lamp.

Francis shows a distressing lack of understanding of the difference between scapegoating and demanding accountability from those responsible. In 2006, when the NHS ran up a half year deficit of £600 million, its chief executive Nigel Crisp resigned. Yet when up to 1200 people die unnecessarily in

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