Howe’s that?

 You’ve got to admire Lord Howe’s balls. With the Health and Social Care Bill facing its final Common’s reading amid Labour claims that it’s a Trojan horse for privatization, up pops health minister Howe to say the overhaul of the NHS in England presents “huge opportunities” to the private sector, and that it doesn’t matter “one jot” who provides care to NHS patients as long as it’s high quality and free at the point of delivery.

Cameron, Clegg and Lansley are only continuing the Blair project – endorsed by Gordon Brown and successive Labour governments – of introducing markets into the NHS. But where Labour tried to hide its intentions with irritating euphemisms – modernisation, choice, empowerment, diversity, plurality, contestability – the coalition is utterly shameless.

Labour did make improvements to the NHS but very little was down to their market experiment. They increased NHS funding from £35 billion to £110 billion and got results. Waiting times, infant mortality and deaths from cancer, heart disease and hospital acquired infections all went down, and life expectancy rose (especially for the rich). Much of this was down to better living standards and the development of collaborative quality standards

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Victory for John Watkinson

Who will be held accountable for the persecution of NHS whistleblower John Watkinson and the waste of £2 million?  (Eyes passim ad nausea )  Watkinson, the former Chief Executive of Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT), was suspended in September 2008 and sacked in April 2009.  In March 2010, an Employment Tribunal (ET) presided over by a High Court judge concluded he was ‘got rid of’ because he blew the whistle on law-breaking by NHS organisations in the south west. This month, an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) threw out the hospital’s appeal.

Watkinson raised concerns when NHS South West, led by Sir Ian Carruthers, decided to move key cancer services out of Cornwall without legally required public consultation. Although Watkinson was dismissed by RCHT, the tribunal heard that NHS South West was behind the move to get rid of Watkinson and that RCHT’s board had come under ‘clear and strong pressure from the SHA’. The tribunal repeatedly sought the attendance of Sir Ian Carruthers to give evidence, but despite his office being less than 100 metres from where the tribunal was held, he did not appear. The Tribunal said evidence presented by the trust’s witnesses was

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Medicine Balls:           Criminalising Herpes

Last week, Northampton traffic officer David Golding pleaded guilty to a charge of Grievous Bodily Harm and was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment because his ex-partner had been diagnosed with genital herpes. Mr Golding previously had genital herpes, but was unaware that he was currently infectious and there was no evidence that transmission was deliberate or malicious. His ‘crime’ was failing to disclose his previous history of infection to his partner, who claimed she would never have had sex with him had she known – even with a condom. Golding went down for “reckless transmission of an incurable sexually transmitted infection (STI)” and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) went back to the dark ages.

The law on deliberate transmission dates back to 1861. When HIV became prevalent, the Home Office consulted experts to draw up a ‘shopping list’ of STIs to distinguish potentially life threatening infections from those it would be ridiculous to criminalise. It was never implemented because of allegations of discrimination by the HIV lobby. However CPS guidelines were drawn up:  “7. The courts have recognised that person-to-person transmission of a sexual infection that will have serious, perhaps life-threatening, consequences for the infected

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What next for NHS Whistleblowers?

The Eye’s Special Report on NHS Whistleblowing  (Eye 1292) triggered an early day motion sponsored by Worthing West MP Peter Bottomley. ‘This House welcomes the Private Eye, Shoot the Messenger articles, on how NHS whistleblowers can be silenced and sacked; anticipates effective action by the Health Select Committee (HSC) and the NHS; and calls for an active central unit to which concerned clinicians can put areas and points that worry them, including details of inappropriate disciplinary action by health employers.’ http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-11/2031

The HSC has already considered whistleblowing in its Patient Safety report in June 2009, and found: ‘The NHS remains largely unsupportive of whistleblowing, with many staff fearful about the consequences of going outside official channels to bring unsafe care to light. We recommend that the DH bring forward proposals on how to improve this situation.’

Incoming health secretary Andrew Lansley’s proposal (currently shelved) was ‘to strengthen the NHS constitution’ to oblige staff to raise concerns and managers to act on them. But the constitution is legally toothless window-dressing. When the charity Action Against Medical Accidents asked the Department of Health (DH), under the Freedom of Information Act, for ‘information on any

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 Another whistleblower refuses to take the hush money

 Whistleblowing paediatrician Dr David Drew had an unblemished career for 37 years, the last 18 in Walsall, until he was sacked in December 2010 for “gross misconduct and insubordination.”  Dr Drew had been medical lead for the paediatric department at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust (WHNT) for 7 years until April 2008.  From October 2008 to April 2009, he raised numerous concerns about child protection, heating failures, cold babies, understaffing and bullying. He was largely ignored.

In April 2009 following a verbal complaint by the Head Nurse, Drew was excluded for 6 weeks. A National Clinical Assessment Service (NCAS) report found that the Medical Director had reported Drew as obstructive, unmanageable, possibly psychotic and guilty of leaking details of a murdered child to the press. He said Drew was a danger to both staff and patients. He sent Drew an urgent psychiatric appointment and wrote that he was excluding Drew ‘on NCAS advice’. This was untrue. 6 weeks later, the MD asked Drew to go back to work.

An internal investigation concluded “no case to answer” and after a period of illness requiring high dose steroids for 4 weeks Drew returned.

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