3rd Letter To Sir Nigel Crisp Sent 23rd February 2003
23 February 2003
Sir Nigel Crisp
Chief Executive
Department of Health & NHS
Richmond House
79 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2NS
Dear Sir Nigel,
Thank you for your letter dated 6th February on which I have had the opportunity to take legal advice.
The second paragraph of your letter states that all Trust’s should have in place appropriate human resource management policies and procedures and that you expect these policies and procedures would be applied by St George’s in my case. One of the reasons why I wrote to you in the first place was to indicate that the Trust had in my case ignored their own procedures, in that I had never ever received a written warning about my conduct at any stage, as is required under the Trust’s Disciplinary Procedure and that my letter of dismissal clearly states that I am not to be given the right to appeal against Catherine McLoughlin decision to dismiss me even though Section 13 of the St George’s Disciplinary Procedure states at section 13.1 and I quote, “An employee has the right of appeal against any formal disciplinary action”. It would be a simple matter for you to confirm that the Chairman of St George’s has with the knowledge of other senior members of the St George’s Board completely failed to follow the Trust’s employment policies and procedures and then take the appropriate but unspecified action you mention in your letter. You also state that it would not be appropriate for you to become involved in the matter because the case is currently subject to legal proceedings. I have to tell you that this is a wholly inappropriate view for you to take as the matter is not sub judicie and is being heard by an employment tribunal not the High Court or even the County Court, so that the only impediment to you having the case investigated is not a legal one, but is in fact your own personal decision not to become involved. Considering I have told you that I have clear evidence that the cancelled operations figures were fraudulently altered by an individual who has now moved on to become Chief Executive of another NHS Trust and I have supplied you with written evidence that shows that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the Trust’s information systems at the time the figures were changed, I find it quite staggering that you have decided to do nothing until you know the outcome of my legal action against the Trust. If I did not have the financial resources to continue to pursue the action then presumably the logical conclusion to be drawn from your letter is that no further action would be taken by the NHS and the whole issue would be swept under the carpet, as I am now aware from the response I received from my Observer article has happened in other cases.
As I said to you before I have worked in the public sector for over thirty years with a completely unblemished disciplinary record. I had previously received nothing but praise and awards for the work that I had done over that period, including the last twelve years as Finance Director at St George’s. Last year I won an employers best practice award for my department, procured and implemented a new state of the art local area computer network that gave St George’s the capability of electronically transferring clinical quality images across the Trust and successfully initiated legal action against a Nursing Agency that had been ripping off Trust’s around the country thereby bringing the NHS a £600,000 benefit. Yet even as a very senior individual within the service with an exemplary record, as soon as I uncover wrong doing by members of my own Board I find that employment procedures are ignored and I am thrown out of my job without any right of an independent hearing or appeal and when I inform the Chief Executive of the NHS of what has happened and that his own code of conduct has been ignored I am given absolutely zero support and I am told that no action can be taken unless at my own expense I can bring a successful claim for unfair dismissal at an Employment Tribunal and then and only then will appropriate action be taken. All this despite the fact that I now have written confirmation from Julie Dent the Chief Executive of the South West London Strategic Health Authority that, “Ian Hamilton informed me of the issues that you had raised in relation to waiting list reporting procedures. I discussed with him the action that the Trust had taken and have been kept informed of the Trust’s subsequent actions in this regard”, clearly demonstrating that the NHS does not find it inappropriate to comment on my case unless of course it is related to the evidence that I can provide to prove wrong doing on the part of my former colleagues. I suppose I should not be too surprised at these actions when the NHS has allowed Kings Healthcare NHS Trust to employ a Director of Estates who only a few years ago had his contract of employment ended at St George’s as a direct result of an audit investigation that I conducted which unearthed considerable wrong doing on his part. I can think of no other organisation where serious financial wrongdoing can be completely ignored, but other employees who have done nothing wrong except tell the truth are dismissed on the spurious grounds that their management style is after sixteen years in the NHS no longer acceptable.
I have to tell you that as a result of the further research I have undertaken in connection with my case and from the various responses I have received from the articles that have been written about my case I now have in my possession a considerable amount of evidence that clearly illustrates wrong doing by a number of senior individuals within the NHS in matters not all of which is directly related to my case. In the normal course of events it is evidence that I would clearly want to share with you, but as you have made the personal decision not to become involved in my case until at least after my employment tribunal case is heard, it seems that sending you further information is pointless and my only alternative is to make all these matters public in the hope that pressure can be brought to bare to end the climate of fear and intimidation that has unfortunately developed within the NHS. Let me assure you that I have no doubts at all that I will win my employment tribunal case and that when this happens and I am asked what help I received from the NHS in uncovering the wrong doing at St George’s I shall honestly be able to answer none at all.
I should advise you that I reserve the right to make the contents of this letter public and to publish the contents of any reply that you may or may not choose to send me in relation to it.
Yours sincerely
Ian Perkin CPFA FRSA