If he won't quit just sack him! MPs and bereaved families demand NHS chief is axed

  • Sir David Nicholson is clinging to his £270,000-a-year job
  • It follows the Mid Staffordshire hospital disaster - costing 1,200 lives
  • He also ignored warnings about another hospital trust under investigation
  • A whistleblower has now spoken of the ‘Stalinist’ nature of the NHS
By Sophie Borland, Claire Ellicott and Tamara Cohen
PUBLISHED: 22:26 GMT, 15 February 2013 | UPDATED: 00:14 GMT, 16 February 2013



Hanging on: The head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, was clinging to his job last night after fresh attacks from politicians and grieving families
Hanging on: The head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, was clinging to his job last night after fresh attacks from politicians and grieving families
The head of the NHS was clinging to his job last night after fresh attacks from politicians and grieving families.
They insist Sir David Nicholson should pay the price for presiding over the Mid Staffordshire hospital disaster that cost the lives of up to 1,200 patients.
Earlier this week it emerged he also ignored warnings about another hospital trust under investigation for the needless deaths of 670 people.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt increased the pressure on Sir David by condemning a culture of ‘institutional self-preservation’ within the NHS.
As the row intensified yesterday:
  • Whistleblower Gary Walker spoke of the ‘Stalinist’ nature of the Health Service and of ‘battlefield scenes’ at the hospital where he was forced to quit as chief executive
  • A second whistleblower broke his silence to say Sir David ignored written warnings about  failings in the same Lincolnshire hospital
  • Mr Hunt wrote to all trusts demanding they justify their use of gagging orders
  • Police revealed they would be investigating whether criminal charges could be brought against Mid Staffordshire staff
  • Relatives of the Stafford victims marched on Downing Street and called for Sir David’s resignation
  • Two MPs from the health select committee also suggested he quit.
Mr Walker revealed he had told Sir David targets were being put ahead of patients at United Lincolnshire hospitals four years ago – but he was removed, paid off and forced to sign a gagging clause.
On Wednesday, he ignored a threatening email from NHS lawyers to give an interview to the Daily Mail in which he attacked Sir David and said he was not interested in patient safety.
 

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The second whistleblower is David Bowles, the former chairman of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, and Mr Walker’s former boss.
He said he sent a letter in July 2009 to Sir David, warning that patients could die there because managers were being forced to meet unrealistic targets.
He claimed the NHS chief executive failed to investigate the detailed allegations properly.
Under pressure: Grieving families insist Sir David should pay the price for presiding over the Mid Staffordshire hospital disaster that cost the lives of up to 1,200 patients
Under pressure: Grieving families insist Sir David should pay the price for presiding over the Mid Staffordshire hospital disaster that cost the lives of up to 1,200 patients
Mr Bowles says he left his job in 2009 after being threatened with suspension when he refused to commit his organisation to meeting national waiting targets.
‘I was put under pressure by NHS bureaucrats to force Gary Walker to leave, but I refused because he was doing a good job of shielding the organisation under relentless pressure to put targets first,’ he said.
‘I wrote to Nicholson in the hope that the full weight of my concerns may be taken seriously. The allegations were serious – I actually referred to the possibility of becoming another Mid Staffordshire hospital calamity – but the inquiry did not look at safety or the breaches of the codes.’
Mr Hunt did not directly attack Sir David yesterday but called for a ‘culture change’ in the Health Service, which currently puts ‘targets ahead of everything else’.
Not happy: Whistleblower Gary Walker, pictured, spoke of the ¿Stalinist¿ nature of the Health Service and of ¿battlefield scenes¿ at the hospital where he was forced to quit as chief executive
Not happy: Whistleblower Gary Walker, pictured, spoke of the 'Stalinist' nature of the Health Service and of 'battlefield scenes' at the hospital where he was forced to quit as chief executive
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s World at One he added: ‘Too much of the system is concerned with institutional self-preservation instead of actually getting to the bottom of whether there are patient safety issues.’
Mr Hunt said he had written to the chief executive asking why Mr Walker was gagged, adding: ‘The first thing a good organisation does when it hears of something that’s gone wrong is to investigate whether there’s any truth in the allegations and get to the bottom of it.’
Meanwhile two Tory MPs on the Commons health select committee have called on Sir David to consider his position. Chris Skidmore, MP for Kingswood, said: ‘I’m deeply uncomfortable that he remains in position.
‘I do feel moving forward that the only way in which we are going to get the changes needed is if there is a change in leadership at the very top. We’ve got to end this incessant culture of the revolving door of management leadership.’
Sarah Wollaston, a former GP who is MP for Totnes in Devon, said: ‘David Nicholson would set an example of leaders taking responsibility for their organisations, not scapegoating, if he stepped down.’
Yesterday a campaigner who helped expose the Mid Staffordshire scandal delivered a letter to the Prime Minister calling for Sir David to go. Julie Bailey, 51, who founded Cure the NHS after her mother died at the trust, said: ‘We believe Sir David has presided over the worst disaster in the history of the NHS.
‘He is the person in charge and he needs to be sacked. We need a leader that inspires and galvanises those working in the NHS and I’m afraid this man doesn’t. He’s a failure.’
Other campaigners have set up a petition on a government website calling for him to resign. More than 2,500 have signed it.
Sir David, whose annual salary package is £270,000, insists he is ‘not ashamed’ to still be in his post because the failure were ‘system wide’ rather than individual.
He has faced increasing calls to resign since a report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal was published last week. He was in charge of the regional body supposedly overseeing Mid Staffordshire but which failed to pick up on the horrific standards of care.
Sir David also appointed the trust’s chief executive – even though he had had no formal training – who axed more than 50 nurses.
As chief executive of the Department of Health he is said to have dismissed warnings from relatives of patients who died, saying they were ‘simply lobbying’.
Up to 1,200 patients are thought to have died unnecessarily at Mid Staffordshire between 2005 and 2009 and many others suffered ‘inhumane’ and ‘degrading’ neglect.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt
Julie Bailey
Demands: Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, left, increased the pressure on Sir David by condemning a culture of ‘institutional self-preservation’ within the NHS.  Campaigner Julie Bailey, right, has called for Sir David to go

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: THIS MODERN DAY APPARATCHIK  MUST GO

Wealthy: Sir David Nicholson earns £270,000 a-year as the chief executive of the NHS
Wealthy: Sir David Nicholson earns £270,000 a-year as the chief executive of the NHS
This month, the NHS has been rocked by two of the most serious scandals  in its history. And, at the centre of both, stands the ex-Communist Sir David Nicholson, its £270,000-a-year chief executive.
Most reasonable people, we suspect, will find it astonishing that he did not resign last Wednesday, when a public inquiry revealed the most appalling, inhumane neglect at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, when he was the bureaucrat in charge.
If anybody in the private sector had presided over a failure which led to the deaths of up to 1,200 people, they would have been sacked.
But Sir David is a man without shame. He only offered token contrition, and insisted he would not resign as it was a system failure.
Now – thanks to whistleblower Gary Walker – we are learning more shocking details of another cover-up involving Sir David, at the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust.
First, Sir David ignored warnings by Mr Walker that an obsession with targets was resulting in squalid conditions on the wards that were almost certainly costing lives.
Then Sir David’s side-kick, Barbara Hakin (later a dame), began a campaign which led to Mr Walker being sacked as the Lincolnshire Trust’s chief executive – and gagged with £500,000 of taxpayers’ money.
Who do these people think they are? They use our money to give themselves huge salaries. Then, when someone complains about their incompetence, they again use our money to gag them.
This paper believes it is incredible that – while hundreds of police are arresting journalists for hacking into celebrities’ phones – not a single NHS bureaucrat has had their collar felt over the countless deaths of terrifyingly vulnerable people.
But then these high officials and quangocrats – so reminiscent of the commissars in Stalin’s Russia – are Britain’s new elite.
They expect knighthoods. They demand the salaries and all the  perks of high-flying executives in the private sector.
But there is a crucial difference. In the private sector, when things go wrong, heads fall. In the NHS, it is the fault of ‘systemic failure’.
The Mail is not in the business of  calling for people in public life  to resign. But so egregious are the outrages that have taken place under Sir David that we support those victims’ relatives who demonstrated outside Number Ten yesterday to demand his head.
Every day this modern day apparatchik remains in post is an affront to morality, justice – and the patients whose lives he destroyed.
Sir David could face further pressure if MPs on the Commons public accounts committee decide to quiz him over his expenses next month. The Mail has revealed he has spent £6,000 of public money on trips to Birmingham – where his wife lives.
Many of the visits spanned long weekends, prompting speculation he was using taxpayers’ money for private purposes.
It emerged last night that doctors, nurses and managers responsible for the horrific neglect at Mid Staffordshire hospitals could be charged with manslaughter.
Police are to consider whether they have enough evidence to prosecute individual members of staff over the scandal. So far not a single member of staff has been prosecuted or even sacked over the deaths between 2005 and 2009.
Hard-hitting: This is the front page of last Thursday's Daily Mail
Hard-hitting: This is the front page of last Thursday's Daily Mail
An inquiry into the disaster published last week refused to scapegoat individual medical staff or managers – and instead blamed failures across the system.
But Mr Hunt has since urged police to investigate cases saying it was ‘outrageous’ nobody had been brought to book.
Last night Staffordshire police said they would be carrying out a joint probe with the Crown Prosecution Service to see if they had enough evidence to press for criminal charges.
A spokesman said charges could include manslaughter or criminal neglect. Officers will review the 1,900 pages of the inquiry published last week and cross reference it with existing evidence, he said.