4th Letter To Sir Nigel Crisp Sent 27th May 2003
26 May 2003
Sir Nigel Crisp
Department of Health
79 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2NS
Dear Sir Nigel,
Thank you for your undated letter, which I received on the 21st June. I am gratified that my appearance on the BBC Hardtalk programme has managed to get you to change from the opinion that you expressed in the e-mail you sent me on the 3rd April when you stated, “Whilst I note the contents (my e-mail to you dated 31st March 2003 raising wrong doing in the NHS), it does not appear to me that it raises anything further which necessitates a response from me, over and above issues which I have already addressed in my letters of 27 March and 6 February”, and that you now acknowledge that an independent review of the issues I have raised with you is required. Who knows with a little more encouragement from myself via the media and you may well start to behave in a manner that brings dignity to the office that you hold and also brings substance to the views that you expressed to the Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee on the 30th January of this year. I quote directly from the minutes when you were questioned by Mr Liddel-Grainger: -
796.
(Sir Nigel Crisp) Well, referring to your colleague's earlier
question, this is tough, this is difficult and there will be instances where
there will be behaviour that we do not condone. Let's be clear that that will
happen in some cases. This is an organisation with a million people working in
it. What we need to do is to make sure that where that happens or where there
are reports of that happening, we investigate them. This again is a world where
lots of people can say lots of things and can make lots of allegations which
need to be tested. We need to look at them and we need to make sure that they do
not happen again and that can be done in a whole series of different ways.
- If
you come across people you realise are bullying because they have got to hit
these targets, what will you do to managers?
(Sir
Nigel Crisp) Well, you will perhaps have seen that there is a code of
conduct ----
- Which
you brought out.
(Sir
Nigel Crisp) ---- for managers which sets out the standards of behaviour
that we expect. I cannot remember the exact words in there, but there is
something about respect and respect for working with people within it. It is for
the individual employers, ie, the trust boards or the health authority boards or
whatever actually to deal with breaches of that and with allegations about that.
- What
if they are doing the bullying?
(Sir
Nigel Crisp) If that were the case, then we have a whistle-blowing system
which can be used.
I
should be grateful if you could explain how any of these comments are consistent
with your recent undated letter to me where you tell me, “It is in my view
that the Employment Tribunal is best placed to consider all of the evidence and
to ascertain the true reasons for your dismissal was fair and identifying
whether you were dismissed for making public interest disclosures”.
I cannot see anywhere in your answer to Mr Liddel-Grainger that you
advocate that NHS employees who claim they are being bullied to falsify figures
should have to resort to the expensive remedy of making an application to an
Employment Tribunal. My reading of
your answers to the question posed is that there is a code of conduct, which
should be used. Do I therefore take
it that the comment made by Catherine McLoughlin the Chairman of St George’s
Healthcare NHS Trust under oath to the Chairman of the London South Employment
Tribunal, that the reason why the Code of Conduct was not followed in my case,
was because as whole the NHS has not accepted and therefore not put into
practice your published code of conduct. Perhaps
you would be so kind to confirm to me before the 3rd June 2003 when
my Employment Tribunal recommences whether this is a position that you endorse.
Your reply will be important to me as I intend to submit your reply in
evidence to the tribunal. Either
Miss Mcloughlin is not telling the truth to the Employment Tribunal or you are
not telling the truth to Parliament and the public, so please be so kind as to
tell me which it is in good time, so that I can submit your reply to the
Tribunal. I believe a failure on
your part to respond to this legitimate request would demonstrate that you have
not learned the lessons from the independent review carried out at the John
Radcliffe Hospital, when it was revealed that for many years under your
leadership as Chief Executive, a culture of cronyism had grown up, such that
patient safety was gravely impaired and that this situation only ended thanks to
the “whistle-blowing” activities of a member of staff.
I hope you have learned the lessons from that experience and will accept
that when wrong doing is exposed, it is your duty as Chief Executive of the NHS
to maintain the open and fair culture that you espouse in public, but which
sadly I have not so far found that you put into practice by your actual deeds.
Following
on from this public espousement of a fair and open culture for NHS staff, I am
surprised that you can still be suggesting that I forward the substantial
written evidence that I have of other wrong doing in the wider NHS, to the South
West London Strategic Health Authority. This
is a body that I am currently involved in legal action with, as I am initiating
a defamation action against them as they gave evidence against me at my internal
NHS disciplinary suggesting that as Finance Director of St George’s Healthcare
I had failed to correctly established a provision for the Trust’s medical
negligence liability. Not only was
the advice given at the hearing incorrect, but also if it had been followed at
the time it would have resulted in the qualification of the Trust’s accounts
and would have exposed me as an accountant to a potentially criminal charge.
Rest assured that this is a further case that I will be pursuing with
full vigour and which I am equally sure as with my Employment Tribunal case will
end in a successful outcome for me, proving that the NHS is not interested in
honesty and the truth, but is more concerned with trying to bully and intimidate
its employees in order to hide bad news. For you to suggest that I should pass evidence to this body
when I may well have to produce it open court to support my defamation case
against that same body is clearly ludicrous and should not be put forward by you
as a serious proposition. I note
your suggestion that the South West London Strategic Health Authority would pass
the evidence I can supply on to the Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland
Strategic Health Authority for them to look at these matters, but I have to tell
you that this proposal is also unacceptable. Given that the wrong doing that I have evidence of includes
the misleading of Parliament and could possibly track back to some very senior
individuals in the NHS, such as John Bacon the head of the NHS in London and
also potentially Andrew Dillon the Chief Executive of the National Institute of
Clinical Excellence, I think it totally inappropriate that you are seriously
proposing that a Strategic Health Authority, which operates at a lower level
than these individuals within the NHS, conducts the investigation, particularly
one selected by an NHS organisation that I am already involved in high profile
litigation with.
Again
going back to the point about a fair and open culture, if you have any intention
of living up to your own rhetoric, you will agree with me that the only sensible
way forward in evaluating the evidence that I can supply, is for you to select
the names of three independent QC’s that are acceptable to the NHS for
conducting an investigation in to the matters that I am raising and then for you
to submit those three names to me for me to select the QC that will be employed
to then consider all the evidence. I
hope that from your own point of view, that you will accept this proposal would
demonstrate that you truly want a fair and open investigation to be conducted.
You should have absolutely nothing to fear from my proposal, as it would
clearly establish the truth of the matters that I am raising with you and it is
an investigation with which I would be prepared to share all the information
that I have without reservation. However,
if you continue to persist with your suggestion that these matters can only be
handled internally within the NHS, this will only lead me to believe that you
have learnt nothing from the John Radcliffe experience and that far from wanting
to encourage a culture of fairness and openness with the NHS, it is clear that
organisations under your leadership are always going to find themselves subject
to a culture of cronyism to the detriment of both employees and more importantly
in the end to the patients that the NHS should be serving.
To support this view I have been told by a current member of the St
George’s Board that the matter of how St George’s would handle an
investigation by the Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland Strategic
Health Authority was discussed at their Board Meeting held on the 20th
May under the confidential part of the agenda, so clearly the South West London
Strategic Health Authority had already raised the mater with St George’s even
before you had even informed me that this was a course of action that you were
proposing, hardly encouraging me to believe that the matters I have reported to
you would have been fairly and openly investigated had I agreed to your
proposal. As I have
previously told you because of your past reluctance to act in a fair and
reasonable fashion in regard to the serious issues I have raised with you and
your current unsatisfactory proposal, I reserve the right to make the
correspondence that passes between us public in line with St George’s
published “Whistle Blowing Policy”.
I
trust that you will do me the service of providing me with a reply to this
letter before the re-commencement of my Employment Tribunal.
Yours sincerely
Ian Perkin CPFA FRSA
CC. Rt Hon Alan Milburn
Chris Grayling MP
Stuart Liddel-Grainger MP