Victimised for blowing the whistle on NHS chiefs: Man who defied £500,000 gagging order faces financial ruin

Gary Walker was paid £500,000 hush money when he left his hospital trust

He has defied gag to speak out against NHS bosses

Now the health service is trying to get the money back



MPs have backed the whistleblower

MP Stephen Dorrell urged the health department not to stop Mr Walker giving evidence about his dismissal



Mr Walker was chief executive of a trust under scrutiny for death rates



Whistleblower: Gary Walker, former chief executive for United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS trust, has defied a legal gag to speak out against NHS management

An NHS whistleblower said he faced ruin for telling the truth about patient safety.

Gary Walker was paid £500,000 to keep quiet after he was removed as chief executive of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust.



But this week he broke his silence about a care scandal that may have cost the lives of 670 patients.

In doing so Mr Walker ignored an email from NHS-funded lawyers ordering him to respect the terms of the gagging order in 2011.

Senior MP Stephen Dorrell today called on the Department of Health to ensure no action was taken by an NHS trust against Mr Walker because he broke the gagging order to speak out about his patient safety concerns.

Warning phone calls followed the letter when it became clear he planned to tell BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about his ordeal.



He was told: ‘Should you breach the term relating to confidentiality, you will immediately repay to the trust, on demand, all sums paid under this agreement in full.’

Refusing to be cowed, Mr Walker gave interviews to the BBC and the Daily Mail. In them, he attacked both the current head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, and one of his key sidekicks, Dame Barbara Hakin.

Mr Walker said Sir David, who faced calls to quit last week for his failure to stop the scandal of high death rates at Stafford Hospital, had been warned about problems in Lincolnshire in 2009 but was ‘not interested in patient safety’.



Instead, Mr Walker claims, he ordered that whistleblowers on the trust’s board who had raised concerns should be sacked.



He also accused Dame Barbara of halting a review into worrying high mortality rates at the trust. Staff were also told ‘targets must be met regardless of demand’.

Mr Walker, a father of two, said: ‘I stand to lose everything if they sue. I only signed the order because my legal fees had reached £100,000 and I was about to lose my house.

‘Now, I risk having to repay even more than the settlement because I could be liable for the trust’s legal fees. I face ruin.



‘But if it’s got to the stage where thousands and thousands of patients are dying needlessly in NHS hospitals and the Government says no one’s to blame, someone needs to stand up and be counted.

'If they want to fight me in the courts for breach of an unlawful contract I was forced to sign, then I will fight them all the way.

Boss: Sir David Nicholson (left) has refused to step down following the scandal. Dame Barbara Hakin (right) allegedly halted a review into high mortality rates at the trust

Gary Walker was paid £500,000 to keep quiet after he was removed as chief executive of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust

'I cannot believe that any reasonable person that believes in transparency would seek to silence matters that are so clearly in the public interest.’



Mr Walker won strong backing from the Commons health select committee on Wednesday night. Stephen Dorrell, its Tory chairman, said he would invite Mr Walker to give evidence to the cross party group of MPs to ‘set out in detail his concerns’.



Mr Dorrell, the chairman of the House of Commons Health Committee, condemned the attempt to gag Mr Walker and said the committee believed such clauses were ‘probably unenforceable’, ‘not acceptable in the NHS’ and ‘against the public interest’.



In a letter to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last night, he urged him to stop the trust from taking any action which would prevent Mr Walker giving evidence to the committee about the reasons for his dismissal.



Take no action: Senior MP Stephen Dorrell urged the health department not to stop Mr Walker giving evidence about the reasons for his dismissal

He said: ‘We were concerned and disappointed to hear that Mr Walker had received a lawyers’ letter which he has interpreted as reinforcing the constraints upon him under the terms of the gagging clause in his compromise agreement.’

Former health secretary Mr Dorrell today said it was not 'legitimate' for gagging clauses to be used to shut down discussion of issues of patient safety. He called on Mr Hunt to follow the recommendation of the Francis Report into the Mid-Staffordshire scandal for a ban on the use of the orders to prevent whistle-blowing.

Mr Dorrell told Today: 'The key question for the Secretary of State now is whether he is prepared to precipitate the kind of culture change which Robert Francis said is core to improving the culture in the NHS.'

Mr Dorrell said he accepted that confidentiality agreements were often required as part of agreements on the termination of employment.

But he added: 'Where there is a legitimate public concern, in particular about patient safety issues, these are not legitimate issues to be covered by confidentiality agreements.'

Asked whether Mr Hunt should take on trusts over the issue of gagging clauses, Mr Dorrell replied: 'Absolutely. One of the things that are wrong about the culture is that we have a debate in the Today programme studio about something that ought to be routine business in the management of every public health provider. We are talking about how public money is spent and how patient safety is safeguarded.'

In his letter to the Health Secretary, Mr Dorrell said: 'The committee intends to write to Mr Walker to invite him to set out in detail the nature of the concerns which lay behind the breakdown of his relationship with the Lincolnshire trust.

'Before doing so, however, I would be grateful if you would confirm that neither the trust nor any other NHS body will seek to enforce any clause in Mr Walker's compromise agreement which would impinge on his capacity to respond fully to the committee's request.'







Mr Dorrell said he and the committee want reassurances that ‘neither the trust nor any other NHS body will seek to enforce any clause in Mr Walker’s compromise agreement which would impinge on his capacity to respond fully’ to the MPs’ request for him to give evidence.



The Lincolnshire trust is one of 14 under investigation over high death rates.



Mr Walker added: ‘I lost my career, my partner of six years and most of my assets challenging my dismissal. But I would not lose my integrity.

‘I settled because my relationship was falling apart, because of the stress, because my children were affected and because I was in arrears on my mortgage and was facing repossession.



‘I could not continue fighting against an NHS with bottomless pockets. I spent £100,000 on legal fees because they dragged it out for so long.’



Robert Francis QC, who led the inquiry into Stafford Hospital, says the true extent of the care failures will probably never be known

He said he had been suspended by the trust for five months without being told what he was charged with prior to his sacking in February 2010.



Mr Walker said he had been forced to take anti-depressants and tranquillisers over that period because he was unable to sleep.



Letters also emerged yesterday from doctors and staff at the trust warning that they were being ‘coerced’ into treating patients in an unsafe environment and were endangering their safety.



According to documents, Sir David agreed in 2009 that ‘changes be made’ to the leadership of the trust after the board blew the whistle on the state of their hospitals.

A month later, charges of misconduct were filed against Mr Walker, who was forced out of his job in 2010 and made to sign the gagging agreement the following year.



Mr Walker’s decision to speak out means he is effectively blacklisted within the NHS and will not be able to get another job.



Hospital managers will be unwilling to hire him in case he speaks publicly about standards of care.



Meanwhile the dozens of nurses and doctors implicated in the horrific neglect at Mid Staffordshire have been allowed to keep their jobs.