St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust

I am writing to you, further to the letter I sent you on the 23rd December 2002.
As you may be aware there has been considerable coverage of my case in the media. BBC London News covered my case in some detail and the television piece is still available on the BBC London website and if you have not seen it the url is
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/38676000/rm/_38676841_whistleblower09_barling_vi.ram
In addition I have been supported by Edward Davey MP and Dr Evan Harris MP and my case has received extensive coverage in the Times, Guardian, Sun, Daily Express, Public Finance and Accountancy Age, although I think the best piece that has been done on my case appeared in yesterdays Observer, the url for which is http://www.observer.co.uk/nhs/story/0,1480,882509,00.html .
It is interesting that the Trust's response to the question of the fraudulent cancelled operations is that the reason they were changed was because of a "computer glitch". As Ian Hamilton the Chief Executive knows well, this issue was raised at the time and I had an audit carried out of the system by the Trust's Head of Information, which showed that there was no problem with the computer systems at all. This is documentary evidence that I will be presenting to the Employment Tribunal in April, but several journalists and television producers have recently contacted me to ask if I have made you and Andrew Foster aware of this evidence. To ensure that you are both aware of what happened, I have therefore attached a file to this letter which contains the e-mail dated 16th October 2001, which I sent to both Ian Hamilton and John Parkes the Deputy Chief Executive (now the Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Trust) the person who actually fraudulently changed the cancelled operations figures, which makes it clear that there was no computer glitch and that in the opinion of the Trust's Head of Information the systems were producing the correct figures and that there was consequently no justification for altering them.
In the light of this information I feel it is incumbent upon me to inform you that despite the seriousness of the allegations that I have made and the fact that I can support them with documentary evidence, no one in the NHS has ever contacted me to investigate this matter, despite the fact that I have raised the issues with both John Bacon and the South West London Strategic Health Authority and that you yourself have made public statements that "whistleblowers" in the NHS will be protected.
A further point, which I feel I must bring to your attention, is that according to the Code of Conduct For NHS Managers, which you issued on the 9th October 2002, it states, " If Chief Executives or Directors are to be investigated, the employing authority should use individuals who are employed elsewhere to conduct the investigation". When my disciplinary hearing was held at St George's, Miss Catherine Mcloughlin the Chairman of the Trust rejected my request for an independent person to chair the hearing and said that she was the only person who could chair the disciplinary and then when I received my dismissal letter she said that there could be no appeal against her decision even though I was contractually entitled to an appeal under Section 13 of the Trust's own Disciplinary Policy. In view of this additional information which I am today bringing to your attention and to the attention of Mr Andrew Foster, I am formally calling on you both to ensure that a
full investigation is carried out what happened at St George's and how so many NHS procedures could have been ignored by the Trust without any action ever being taken by any of the NHS bodies to which the Trust is accountable.
The Observer newspaper additionally asked me to write a piece for them on what I consider is currently wrong within the NHS and what needs to be done to correct the situation. If this is of interest to you it can be found on their website at url
http://www.observer.co.uk/nhs/story/0,1480,882717,00.html.
Will you please note that I reserve the right to make the contents of this letter public and also reserve the right to make the contents of any reply I receive from either you or Mr Foster public.

Yours sincerely

Ian Perkin CPFA FRSA

cc Andrew Foster

Dr E.Harris MP

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