Anne Backhouse

NHS SPENT MILLIONS SILENCING SIX DOCTORS. EVERY SINGLE ONE WAS RIGHT Private Eye @PrivateEyeNews called them the Super Sextet. Six doctors and executives who saw dangerous things happening in NHS hospitals, raised the alarm, and were systematically destroyed for it. Not one of them was wrong. Every single concern turned out to be valid. Dr Kim Holt @drkimholt warned Great Ormond Street Hospital that the child protection clinic in Haringey was dangerously understaffed and missing patient records. Management put her on special leave for four years. Baby Peter Connelly died. The trust spent £286,000 on consultants to investigate itself and found no management failings. Then it offered Holt £120,000 to sign a super-gag and disappear. She refused. Steve Bolsin, cardiac anaesthetist at Bristol Royal Infirmary, spent six years documenting that children were dying at an entirely avoidable rate during heart surgery. He raised it internally. He raised it with the Department of Health. He was told to keep his head down. Between 30 and 35 children died unnecessarily. Bolsin was described at a European surgeons conference as the most hated anaesthetist in Europe. He left the UK in 1995 and never came back. Ash Pawade turned around a catastrophic children's heart surgery unit in Bristol. When a baby died after an overworked perfusionist made a drug error caused by NHS staffing cuts, Pawade backed his colleague and called management to account. He was ordered to apologise for impugning the trust's legal team. He left the NHS without any recognition. Dr Raj Mattu, a world-renowned cardiologist in Coventry, watched a patient die because five beds had been crammed into a ward designed for four, leaving three beds with no access to oxygen or suction. He reported it. A senior manager responded by saying he wanted Mattu off the road completely. Mattu was suspended for six years, then sacked. The trust spent over £14 million of public money trying to discredit him. He was eventually awarded £1.22 million. The CEO who oversaw the campaign against him was given a CBE. Gary Walker was brought in to turn around United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust after seven CEOs in six years. He balanced the books and hit the targets. When a winter surge led clinicians to warn that patient lives were at risk, Walker wrote to his Strategic Health Authority. The SHA's chief executive emailed back: you need to meet targets whatever the demand. Walker was sacked in 2010 for gross misconduct. The gross misconduct was using the f-word nine times in three meetings over two years, not directed at anyone in particular. Dr Peter Wilmshurst, consultant cardiologist at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, spent 30 years reporting research fraud, confronting pharmaceutical companies, and taking on anyone who put profit above patient safety. He was sued for libel three times by a US medical device company after accurately reporting that their product did not work. The legal battle nearly cost him his home. The same playbook runs across all of them: suspend the whistleblower, bury them in vexatious complaints, pay management consultants to clear management, offer a gag clause, and wait for the person to break. @NHS spent millions silencing these six people. Not one manager faced meaningful consequences for any of it. Source: Shoot the Messenger, @PrivateEyeNews Special Report by Dr Phil Hammond @drphilhammond and Andrew Bousfield