Hunt must protect NHS whistleblowers

PUBLISHED: 20:19 EST, 2 March 2014 | UPDATED: 20:19 EST, 2 March 2014

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Jeremy Hunt has acknowledged the silencing of whistleblowers is wrong. He now he to take action to show it

Exactly one year ago, in the wake of the Francis report into lethal NHS cover- ups at Mid Staffs and elsewhere, Jeremy Hunt declared that ‘the era of gagging staff from raising their real worries about patient care must come to an end’.

‘There has been a culture where people felt if you speak up about problems in the NHS you didn’t love the NHS’, the Health Secretary said. ‘Actually, it’s exactly the opposite.’

How true. Depressingly, however, it appears some NHS bureaucrats have continued down the same dangerous path of trying to silence the whistleblowers and keep failure and incompetence hidden.

Consider the disturbing case of Sandra Haynes Kirkbright.

Mrs Haynes Kirkbright, a data expert, repeatedly raised concerns with her superiors at Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust about the manipulation of hospital death rates – a key indicator of poor patient care. They ignored her.

Exasperated, and fearing for patient safety, she approached this newspaper with her claims, which were published in a front-page article of overwhelming public interest last March.

But, as we reveal today, the response of the Trust machine – worried about its ‘reputation’ – was ruthless and chilling.

First, she was put under investigation for the Stalinist charge of having ‘recklessly or negligently expressed her opinions’.

Now the 50-year-old is facing the sack and the loss of her ‘whole career’.

Let her case serve as a timely reminder to Mr Hunt that identifying how Labour allowed a culture of secrecy and cover-ups to take root in the NHS is not the same as curing it.

If more patients are not to suffer appalling and needless deaths, he must give whistleblowers like Mrs Haynes Kirkbright the protection their courage deserves.

Are they ashamed?

According to the outgoing chairman of the media watchdog Ofcom, imposing statutory regulation of the Press would be a ‘grave error for this country and society’.

Colette Bowe added that the politicians’ Royal Charter – devised over pizza at 2am, in a grubby stitch-up with the anti-Press celebrity lobby group Hacked Off –made her ‘very, very nervous’.

She joins a long list of respected voices opposed to the plans, including the World Press Freedom Committee, the International Press Institute and the Inter American Press Association, who jointly said the ‘repressive’ controls would be ‘seized on’ by the world’s tyrants to justify crushing free speech in their own countries.

Is it more than coincidence, then, that the Foreign Office has just rejected a prestigious invitation from UNESCO to stage World Press Freedom Day in the UK this year? Officials say they were not given sufficient time to prepare.

More likely, they recognise Westminster would require some brass-neck to host an event that is intended as ‘a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment’ to a free Press.

Another rights insult

Today we reveal how the convicted murderer and rapist Arthur Duncan is to receive compensation – under, you guessed it, human rights law – because the prison authorities declined to send him on a taxpayer-funded therapy course.

The relatives of this monster’s 22-year-old victim, Linda Bull, say they have been ‘kicked in the teeth’.

The real tragedy is that they are not the first family to suffer such egregious injustice and – while ever Britain remains in-thrall to the meddlesome European Court of Human Rights – they will certainly not be the last.