Ex NHS Chief “being gagged”

Posted 02/07/2012

A former head of an NHS Trust has been paid more than ?500,000 including legal costs as part of a severance deal which also stops him discussing patient safety. Gary Walker was sacked as CEO of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust in February 2010. Supporters say he has been bound by a “super gag” a clause which has been used widely to silence NHS critics. The Trust said all parties had reached an amicable resolution.

Mr Walker had been pursuing an unfair dismissal claim before the payout. The official reason for his dismissal from the ?140k pa post was that he had sworn openly at meetings but supporters say this was a trumped up charge.

A Senior Trust Member, Phil Scarlett who resigned in 2009, said he initially assumed the official reason for Mr Walker’s dismissal was a joke. He said “I’d heard him swear but only in passion about something that had gone wrong or sometimes something had gone well -never at an individual. Before his dismissal Mr Walker had had a serious disagreement with his superiors over the direction of health policies in Lincolnshire. BBC correspondent Andrew Hosken said that essentially Mr Walker had disobeyed orders from his superiors to focus his efforts on official government targets for non-urgent medical cases.

Mr Bowles, who resigned as Chairman of the United Lincolnshire Trust over NHS Targets in 2009, believed the dispute was about safe care. He said: “You have a choice, you can either treat your emergency patients safely and delay your non emergency patients or you give priority to the non emergency patients to meet the target and then the emergency patients suffer.” The entire Trust board had made it clear in June 2009 that it was not prepared to give guarantees or assurances on meeting non urgent targets.

In April 2011 an employment tribunal in Nottingham was to hear Mr Walkers claim for unfair dismissal. The Tribunal Judge had already found prima facie evidence that the former chief executive had made a disclosure which was protected under whistle-blowing law when he made clear his concern over patient safety. Before the Tribunal was due the Trust made a deal with Mr Walker which it described as amicable, his supporters say he had to sign or lose his house.

He apparently received a payment of ?320,000 and signed a compromise agreement with a confidentiality clause; this prevents him from talking about the agreement behind his dismissal which his supporters say are in the public interest. Mr Bowles is clear that the pay-off came with a “super gag”.

Julie Crossley, a medical injury lawyer at Ashtons Legal, notes: “It is clearly worrying if Chief Executives are being put in the untenable position of having to consider whether they treat emergency patients safely but delay non emergency patients in the process when pressure is being put on them to focus on non urgent cases to meet Government targets and are then being “gagged” in the process.”