- The Observer,
- Sunday January 26 2003
Ian Perkin, who was finance director of St George's Healthcare NHS Trust in Tooting, south London, the tenth largest NHS organisation in the country, said the pressure from Ministers on managers to meet government targets was making it impossible to talk openly about problems in the NHS.
A 52-year-old father of four, Perkin was dismissed from his £100,000-a-year job last December after exposing an alleged waiting list fiddle. He had also pointed out to senior Whitehall officials that the Government's system of funding hospitals was unfairly penalising poorer inner-city areas.
In his first public comments, Perkin claimed that his bosses had asked him to go quietly, and assured him he would be paid his full salary for six months without doing any work, before they found another job for him in the NHS. His claim has not been denied by the hospital.
Instead of taking up the offer, Perkin decided to take the trust to an employment tribunal in an attempt to win back his job at the hospital where he has worked for the past 16 years.
'I don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else,' he said. 'I was a finance director in charge of a hospital with a £270 million budget, and if I can't tell the truth about funding problems in the NHS, then who can?
'Politicians say they want to encourage whistle-blowing and honesty, but the pressure on managers is greater than ever, and it works against that honesty. If you speak out, you are labelled "difficult" and "not a team player", which is what happened to me.'
The trust says Perkin's abrasive, sometimes rude management style led to a clash of personalities that made it impossible for him to carry on in the job. However, he is adamant that his refusal to toe the line is the real reason for his dismissal.
His case highlights what many see as the secretive culture of the NHS, which has changed little despite Labour's attempts to make it more open. Managers still find it hard to expose wrongdoing in the press or at public meetings.
Perkin says his troubles date back to October 2001, when a colleague told him that a junior member of staff had been asked to enter some incorrect figures on to the data being sent to the Department of Health, suggesting that there had been no cancelled operations that week. In fact, the official knew there had been 28.
Perkin said he then looked back over the statistics and realised that, for the previous week, zero had also been inputted, when in fact there had been more than 40 cancellations. He raised the issue with his chief executive, Ian Hamilton, who allegedly told him the information was not his responsibility.
The trust maintains that there was no deliberate attempt to disguise the figures, but that a computer glitch had affected their ability to give reliable figures. But there was undeniably pressure on the trust over its cancellations. As a result of having a high rate of postponed operations that year, St George's failed to win the top three-star rating.
The trust's chair, Catherine McLoughlin, told Perkin that board members were unhappy with his attitude. Perkin began to worry about the finances of the trust, and the fact that he was being asked to find £4.5m in savings when the hospital was being asked to treat more patients than ever to clear the waiting lists.
In July 2002, he went to a meeting of finance directors, held in Westminster. These are occasions when officials can speak freely about problems facing them, without worrying about the com ments being made public, and Perkin did just that. He told Richard Douglas, the NHS's finance director, that hospitals such as his were effectively being penalised for serving poor communities, because of the way the health service calculated employment costs.
'I realised that we were being asked to make huge savings, more than trusts in wealthier areas, because of the unfair way calculations are done. I told the other directors this, and many agreed.'
Perkin was from Worcester Park in Surrey, took his children on holiday, only to be summoned by the chief executive the following Monday when, he alleged, he was offered 'gardening leave' - six months supposedly working, when he would in fact be at home. He turned down the offer and was suspended, and then dismissed in December after a hearing which was chaired, against his wishes, by McLoughlin. He was told he had no right of appeal.
Now a date has been set for the end of April for a full tribunal hearing into his case, where he will argue that his right to express an honest opinion has been violated.
The trust denies that he was dismissed for whistleblowing or for expressing his views on its financial position. A spokesman said: 'There was an irretrievable breakdown in relations between Mr Perkin and the trust. His position had become untenable.'
< A HREF="mailto:jo.revill@observer.co.uk">jo.revill@observer.co.uk< / A >
