Patients are being put at risk by NHS bosses launching “sham investigations” into whistleblowers to shut down concerns, a former hospital chief executive who won a £1.4m bullying claim has said.
Dr Susan Gilby took over as chief executive at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2018 after it was rocked by the Lucy Letby case. She was awarded the payout – one of the biggest in NHS history – last month after a tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed after raising concerns about alleged bullying and harassment by the chair of the hospital board.
An employment judge found that board members of the hospital conspired to unfairly exclude her and deleted documents when she launched legal action.
Speaking to the Guardian, Gilby said she had been “traumatised” by the experience and made to feel like a “pariah in the NHS” for refusing to drop her concerns in return for a “non-job”.
“I feel desperately saddened that my NHS career has come to an end in the way it has. It’s had a really deep psychological impact [and] probably taken at least 10 years of working life away from me,” she said.
“It’s been very isolating. People walk away when they realise you’re not willing to play by the NHS playbook and accept the offer to get you out of the situation. Doing that has resulted in being made to feel that I’m a pariah in the NHS.”
Tribunal judges found that Ian Haythornthwaite, the chair of the Countess of Chester hospital NHS foundation trust, worked with three other senior figures to “engineer her dismissal” after Gilby raised a whistleblowing complaint about his “bullying and harassment”.
Haythornthwaite, who resigned after the tribunal ruling, was described by the employment judge Dawn Shotter as an “inaccurate historian” who did not give credible testimony.
Shotter also criticised the reliability of the three others – Ros Fallon, Ken Gill and Nicola Price – who were found to have conspired with Haythornthwaite to build a “sham case” against Gilby to force her out.
Haythornthwaite, a former BBC executive, was judged to have worked with others to delete scores of documents, including private emails and WhatsApp messages, despite being legally obliged to retain them for the employment proceedings.
Shotter described this as a “deliberate intention to hide documents” that would have exposed “the true part” played by him.
A barrister for the Countess of Chester hospital told the tribunal there was no intention to deceive. However, judges rejected this claim as being without “any validity given the extent of [their] failure to disclose”.
Gilby, a consultant in intensive care and anaesthesia, was suspended on full pay at the hospital in 2022, shortly after making a protected disclosure about Haythornthwaite’s “unacceptable and bullying” behaviour.
She said she and her legal team were now exploring whether to make a criminal complaint against Haythornthwaite after the tribunal’s findings. One of the offences being considered as the basis for a possible complaint is alleged misfeasance in public office, in which a senior figure has knowingly misused or abused their power.
Haythornthwaite told the Guardian he denied any allegation of criminal wrongdoing and said he would not comment on “unspecified allegations by unspecified people”.
He rejects the claim that his behaviour was “unacceptable and bullying” and contests the tribunal’s finding that his evidence was not credible, and that he deliberately hid documents.
Gilby told the tribunal she was offered a “non-job” with NHS England if she dropped her complaints, which she refused to do, which is when the trust’s chair launched a misconduct investigation into her.
She said: “Sham investigations appear to be increasingly and frequently used as a way of manipulating somebody out of an organisation or closing down concerns inappropriately. I think it is a very common problem across the NHS. I wouldn’t say it’s endemic but it’s happening too often and it’s incredibly harmful.”
Gilby is now calling for new regulations for senior NHS managers from non-clinical backgrounds, as well as a legally binding framework for how they operate.
The NHS has been criticised repeatedly for the way leaders deal with whistleblowing complaints. Gilby said she had been contacted by numerous health bosses since her tribunal who had been forced out in a similar way.
“It’s not just one bad apple – absolutely not,” she said. “I genuinely believe that on the whole there are very many people doing the right thing across the NHS. But unfortunately [these issues] repeat year on year, but not many people have got the resources or the resilience to see it through.
“I therefore do feel that something needs to be done that will ensure that people think twice before they choose to use their organisation and resources to wage personal vendettas.”
Gilby said the protections for NHS whistleblowers did not go far enough, leaving medics afraid to raise concerns and potentially putting patients at risk.
“Patient safety incidents will go unnoticed and unreported and there will be no learning,” she said. “We see that time and time again. I was acutely aware of how poor culture and behaviour at the very top can impact patient safety. That’s why I was so adamant that I wasn’t going to walk away.”
A spokesperson for the Countess of Chester hospital NHS foundation trust said: “We acknowledge the tribunal’s decision regarding the failures of the trust in this case. We remain focused on learning from the findings and continuing to support our staff and patients. As this matter has now concluded, we will not be commenting further.”
