National Guardian et al: ‘Fantastic’….or airbrushed fantasy?

By Dr Minh Alexander and Clare Sardari @SardariClare, NHS whistleblowers, 9 March 2017

Summary

Senior NHS silence continues about Paula Vasco-Knight, who bullied whistleblowers, ahead of her sentencing for fraud tomorrow. There is no evidence of learning. The National Freedom To Speak Up Guardian is also proving selectively deaf. Questions by whistleblowers, submitted to her conference yesterday, were deleted. Amazingly, the National Guardian is splashing cash on glitzy events even though she is not yet open for business, despite distressed whistleblowers pleading at her door. She will also help save ministerial blushes by restricting the number of whistleblower cases that she reviews to just twenty a year.

Tomorrow, Paula Vasco-Knight former NHS CEO will be sentenced at Exeter Crown Court for a fraud. 1

The NHS Protect investigation of this fraud started in March 2014, after a referral by NHS England and South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. 2

Before Vasco-Knight was prosecuted for the fraud, an Employment Tribunal found in January 2014 that she had bullied whistleblowers, breached the Code of Conduct for NHS Managers and was not a reliable witness. 3

Despite this, Vasco-Knight was protected and recycled by NHS regulators, until the fraud came into the public domain, in May 2016. 4

There are signs that some NHS bodies are singing from the same hymn sheet regarding her case. The bodies associated with her recycling have all but one missed a deadline on FOI requests about their knowledge of, and response to, the fraud. Several have refused to explain the delay.

CQC, NHS Improvement and NHS England are amongst those feet dragging in this concert of silence. One may be forgiven for wondering if the gaming tables have been opened, with a view to minimising the further embarrassment of tomorrow’s sentencing.

The Department of Health frequently claims that NHS regulators and other oversight bodies are independent. Are they really, or is this simply a convenient political device for deniability? In fact, the Department of Health has the power to orchestrate and intervenes when it pleases.

The professional regulator for nurses, the NMC gave Vasco-Knight a pass when she was referred after the whistleblower reprisal. It provided the CQC with part of the assurance for closing down a Regulation 5 Fit and Proper Person referral. 5 There was no obvious consequence for the NMC resulting from this behaviour.

However, when other NMC misdeeds arose in connection with one of Jeremy Hunt’s political hobbyhorses, he stepped in to order an investigation of the NMC. 6

The National Guardian’s office for NHS whistleblowing is demonstrating that it too is part of the NHS Denial Machine.

The office has resisted meaningful involvement of whistleblowers. It has reluctantly allowed them tokenistic access to its policy making, after protest and only when plans for closed meetings were leaked. 7

Unlike the Chief Investigator of the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, Henrietta Hughes is not rocking any boats by challenging her masters. Nor is she seeking statutory independence or powers. 8 She is however taking an excessively long time to open for business. She is still not taking referrals of whistleblower cases, 8 despite requests for help from desperate whistleblowers, and her policy proposals are unfair to whistleblowers. 9

The National Guardian peddles Good News culture 10, compulsory smiling 11 and is reluctant to discuss sanctions for suppression and reprisal against whistleblowers. 8 12

Yesterday, despite not yet being open for business, the National Guardian surreally held an inaugural national conference for Speak Up Guardians, facilitated by Public Concern at Work (PCaW). 13

Few whistleblowers were invited. The event was not advertised on the National Guardian events page 14 as usual. The conference was only discovered by most whistleblowers the day beforehand, because a delegate let it out of the bag.

At the conference, a tiny handful of carefully chosen whistleblowers – some currently working as Speak Up Guardians – were paraded to suit a certain narrative.

Trite statements like “follow your conscience” 15 were made.

It is in fact reckless to encourage staff to whistleblow without ensuring that they are fully informed, taking account of the personalised risk assessment of each case.

Revealingly, questions that were submitted electronically to conference speakers were tightly controlled. Several questions by whistleblowers who had not been invited were airbrushed out.

One of the authors of this piece submitted these questions:

but they were deleted, twice.

When the second author submitted the same question about the jailed Speak Up Guardian, but anonymously, it was accepted and trended.

But eventually, it too was deleted despite being the second most “liked” question.

The CEO of Public Concern at Work in fact acknowledged that key questions arise from the jailing of the Speak Up Guardian. 16 17 But it is not yet clear if they were asked at yesterday’s conference.

There were other disallowed and deleted questions from whistleblowers and their supporters. This included a question to the Torbay Guardian who was a conference speaker, about the learning at Torbay from the Vasco-Knight scandal.

In response to protest about the deletion of this question about Torbay, PCaW explained that delegates’ questions were being given priority.

This did not explain why awkward questions by named delegates, such as those about Race, were also deleted.

Also, this tweeted question about Race remained unanswered:

The final published conference questions looked nothing like the real number and type of questions that had been asked (www.sli.do conference code #3093 )

Most tellingly, many of the questions were submitted anonymously, apparently by Speak Up Guardians. For example:

There were also questions which exposed the lack of training and preparation for Speak Up Guardians:

Robert Francis attended the conference and reportedly told the assembled Speak Up Guardians:

“You are the pioneers, there’s not another model like it in the world”

(Reported via a tweet by PCaW)

That’s one way to spin and justify his un-evidenced proposals. 18

At a time of underfunding and immense financial pressure for the NHS, when patients are dying in A&E corridors 19 and coroners are issuing warnings on deaths due to bed shortage 20, it is shocking to see money thrown away on a political vanity project and spangly events.

Francis, Hunt and CQC would do well to remember that one of the seven pillars of clinical governance is “resource effectiveness” 21 Eg. Don’t fritter away precious money that could benefit patients, through waste, inefficiency or untested measures.

The conference generated much of the usual NHS self-congratulation, self-promotion and sycophancy. Selfies with the great and the good abounded, “I’m so honoured…” tweets (see twitter hashtag #FTSU), much hot air about “passion” and so on.

All very jolly, and some of it probably well intentioned, but a million miles away from the unpleasant reality of injustice to harmed patients and whistleblowers.

Importantly, Henrietta Hughes gave whistleblowers the finger by announcing at the conference that on a budget of £1 million, she will review only twenty whistleblower cases a year. 22

Whistleblowers expected her office to be a political bottleneck, and have now been proven right.

Twenty cases is a laughably small figure.

Robert Francis’ explicit purpose in recommending the creation of the National Guardian’s office was to ensure that whistleblowers had a place to go, if their employers let them down.

No one knows how many NHS whistleblower cases run into difficulty, because this has never been properly measured. But the data available from PCaW and the CQC suggests there are hundreds of cases a year where health staff are either forced to make external disclosures (as a result of employers’ failures) or where they have experienced reprisal. 23 24

So with an annual caseload of only twenty, it looks like the National Guardian will leave most of the whistleblowers who ask her for help hanging out to dry.

The Freedom To Speak Up project is dreadful waste of opportunity and public money. Worst of all, it leaves patients exposed.

Henrietta Hughes has quipped several times that things are “fantastic”. 8

Fantasy, more like.

4 thoughts on “National Guardian et al: ‘Fantastic’….or airbrushed fantasy?”

zrpradyer says:

March 9, 2017 at 3:07 pm

Thank you for this post, Dr A.
However, the only positive I can glean is that the blind, self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-protecting and self-promoting behaviours are at least consistent. They are predictable and leave deep footprints for all those, who are not wilfully blind, to see.
I think it best I don’t say more but I do thank you.
Zara

LikeLiked by 2 people

dms91 says:

March 9, 2017 at 5:01 pm

Appreciate your comments Zara and agree if lessons were being learnt then Dr A would be invited to speak not have comments deleted!

LikeLiked by 1 person

1. zrpradyer says:
  
  March 9, 2017 at 5:10 pm
  
  Exactly!
  Thus, I thank you and wish you well.
  Z.
  
  LikeLike
  
dms91 says:

March 9, 2017 at 5:03 pm

Senior NHS silence continues about Paula Vasco-Knight, who bullied whistleblowers, ahead of her sentencing for fraud tomorrow. There is no evidence of learning. The National Freedom To Speak Up Guardian is also proving selectively deaf. Questions by whistleblowers, submitted to her conference yesterday, were deleted.
Why am I not shocked?

LikeLiked by 1 person