NHS whistleblowers are being gagged, says consultant paediatrician

NHS whistleblowers are being gagged, says consultant paediatrician:

Kim Holt, who raised concerns about a clinic where Baby P was treated, says employment laws are used to silence critics

A consultant paediatrician who raised concerns about a clinic where Baby Peter was treated days before his death has accused NHS managers of using employment laws to gag potential whistleblowers.

Kim Holt said there was a need to "change the culture of the NHS to one of openness and transparency and not one where the truth is often hidden and employment laws misused to silence critics.

"Whistleblowing should be actively encouraged within the NHS. As the evidence given to the Mid Staffordshire inquiry from people too scared to raise concerns showed, without the 'safety valve' provided through an effective whistleblowing procedure patients may be harmed or even killed."

Holt was speaking before the formal launch of a lobby group, Patients First, made up of whistleblowers within the NHS. In 2006 she and colleagues raised concerns over poor record-keeping and understaffing at St Ann's clinic in Haringey, north London, a move she has previously said led to her being removed from the clinic.

The following summer, Peter Connelly was seen by an inexperienced locum doctor days before he was killed. The locum failed to spot signs that the 17-month-old boy, who was on Haringey's child protection register, had been physically abused.

Holt has also said she was offered £120,000 to withdraw her complaints after Baby Peter's death, a claim Great Ormond Street denied, but in June this year, the hospital, which supplied doctors for the clinic and Haringey primary care trust, apologised for the "difficult time" she had had. Holt now works at the Whittington hospital in north London.

The health minister Anne Milton said: "Staff on the frontline know when patient services need to improve. That's why staff who blow the whistle are crucial in helping to raise standards and we are determined to support them.

"We have already brought in a contractual right to raise concerns and issued clear guidance to NHS organisations that all their contracts of employment should cover staff whistleblowing rights. We are also putting the rights of whistleblowers in the NHS Constitution. So-called 'gagging clauses' are simply unacceptable, and void under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. We will continue to do everything we can to support whistleblowers." The Guardian