London Health Emergency
John Lister of London Health Emergency who spoke up for me when my Employment Tribunal judgment was issued. (Click Here for Newspaper Report) contacted me to ask if I would write an article for Health Emergency about my experiences with the NHS and the Employment Tribunal. The article I have written is produced below:-
A public sector worker for over thirty years I believe there is no better way of providing schools, hospitals, the police or any other vital public service. Whatever is said about PFI schemes and private sector efficiency, the fact is the Treasury borrows money more cheaply than anyone giving the public services a huge in built financial advantage over the private sector which needs to earn an investor return. Add the huge dedication shown by many public sector workers who want to work for organisations that have a moral purpose and you have another huge inbuilt advantage.
However the public sector still has to deal honestly with problems arising from huge demands for its services and limited government funding. That is why as Finance Director at St George’s a large NHS hospital I could not remain silent when it became apparent that the number of operations being cancelled at short notice was being misreported and that the hospital was heading for a £2.5 million financial deficit. When the NHS found out about the impact of these two "whistle-blows" in July 2002 I was asked to resign and when I refused I was subjected to a completely unfair disciplinary procedure and dismissed from my job, without the right to appeal as required by the ACAS code of conduct.
I took my case to an Employment Tribunal confident of reinstatement. However, after being made to wait, not for the usual four weeks for Chairman John Warren’s judgment, but instead for seven and a half months, I was shocked to find that while it was found that I had been unfairly dismissed and that the Trust accepted that I had "whistle-blown" on the cancelled operations, I was not to be reinstated or compensated because of my "management style" and because I had robustly defended myself. The shock was heightened when I found that the judgments conclusions about my management style were in part reliant on the incorrect transposition of documents submitted in my defence and which had had their meaning altered by the Tribunal to my clear detriment.
Fortunately my Union the GMB are funding my appeal and I will continue the fight to clear my name and expose the wrongdoing which I highlight in my website www.nhsexpose.co.uk in the hope that the NHS and the Employment Tribunal Service treat others more fairly in the future.
What has happened at St George’s since my sacking? John Parkes who misreported the cancelled operations has gone on to be the Chief Executive at other NHS Trust’s and Catherine McLoughlin Trust Chairman, who the Tribunal found had lied under oath, remains a NHS ministerial advisor. The financial position has gone into melt down with St George’s heading for a deficit of over £11million, which includes an unexplained £1 million compromise payment to the Trust’s PFI partners. And me? Well I’m signing on every fortnight at the job centre, as an NHS warning to others not to blow the whistle.