Jerry C Lim retweetledi
NHS PAID £500,000 OF YOUR MONEY TO BUY ONE MAN SILENCE
Gary Walker ran United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (@ULHT_News). He watched the @NHS push non-emergency waiting targets so hard that emergency patients were being left at risk. He refused to play along. So they sacked him.
The official reason? Swearing too much in meetings.
Right.
What actually happened was Walker had used whistleblowing legislation to raise patient safety concerns, and was then handed a gagging clause so secret he was forbidden from even acknowledging it existed.
They called it a supergag. The settlement, including legal costs, came to around £500,000 of taxpayers money.
He signed it because he was in danger of losing his house, had children to support, and knew that attacking the very top of the NHS came with dramatic consequences.
Then in February 2013, one week after the Francis Report into Mid Staffs landed without a single person being held accountable for hundreds of deaths, Gary Walker had had enough.
He broke the supergag live on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (@BBCr4today).
The Trust's lawyers immediately wrote to him threatening he would have to repay the full £500,000.
The Health Secretary at the time called it the wrong thing to do. Attacked a culture of institutional self-preservation. Said strong words. Nothing structurally changed.
Gary Walker remained blacklisted from the NHS and found getting work almost impossible. That, as he put it himself, is the plight of most whistleblowers whether they win or lose.
He raised concerns about patient safety. He was sacked, silenced, threatened with financial ruin, and then professionally destroyed.
NHS called that protecting patients.
Source: Bureau of Investigative Journalism (@TBIJ), BBC (@BBCNews), @DailyMail
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