It is no secret that the NHS continues to use NDA’s as a means of silencing whistleblowers who alert the public to medical and cultural risks that could harm them. In the report published today in HSJ magazine we can see the tip of the cover up iceberg. Read more about it here.
Since the late 1990’s successive health ministers have condemned the use of settlement agreements, but the figures uncovered by HSJ expose the conservative estimate of circa £30m of taxpayer cash used to shut up whistleblowers and cover up wrongdoing between 2015 and 2021.
This figure is likely to be a fraction of the true figure given the few Trusts who complied with the FOI.
Georgina Halford-Hall, CEO of WhistleblowersUK says, “We have seen no reduction in the use of settlement agreements or the chilling impact on those who sign them despite the protections afforded whistleblowers in the Public Interest disclosure Act which must be condemned to history.
We have been leading the campaign for the Office of the Whistleblower that will ban the use of NDAs and will be calling on Health secretary Sajid Javid to take swift and decisive action to end this practice now.”
Mary Robinson MP Chair of the APPG for Whistleblowing says, “Figures released today exposing NHS Trusts who have spent up to £1m gagging whistleblowers makes eye watering reading. Covid has demonstrated the importance of our NHS and the need to encourage and support those who speak out in the prevention of future pandemics.
I have fully supported Maria Millar’s bill to ban NDA’s and continue to press forward proposals set out by Baroness Kramer and the APPG for Whistleblowing that I chair for the introduction of the Office of the Whistleblower.
This office will enforce the existing laws that ban the use of NDAs to silence whistleblowers and introduce measures that hold to account those who break the rules.”