Veteran NHS whistleblower campaigner, Dr Chris Day, has written a damning letter to Lord Fairley, President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, accusing the system of “Institutional Corruption” in the way it has handled his case.

Dr Day, who has just lost an appeal case heard by employment appeal judge Sheldon, compared the way both the employment appeal court and the previous employment tribunal handled the proceedings to the verdict in the infamous Daniel Morgan murder case which has never been solved after a trial of suspects collapsed.

The way this murder was handled by the Metropolitan police led the independent panel to rule: ““Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of an organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit. In the Panel’s view, this constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”

Dr Day has emerged bloodied but not unbowed from a judgment that rejected all the detriments he claimed and was surprisingly unconcerned about the defendants Lewisham and Greenwich Health Trust’s chief executive lying on oath about a board meeting and its deputy communications office, Mr Cocke, destroying 90,000 emails that could have been useful to his case during the hearing. The worst the judgment could say was this was ” troubling.” Given this centred on his whistleblowing about the avoidable deaths of two patients in Woolwich hospital’s intensive care unit, which the trust has always tried to deny, this is a remarkably tame comment.

What was particularly hurtful to Dr Day is that at the appeal hearing he was accused in open court of lying about cost threats. He had been clear that he was forced at one stage to try to settle his case because he was told by his barrister that he would face a proposed application from the NHS for £500,000. See my report on his wife’s evidence here.

Effectively he was being called a liar by saying this had happened. Instead there is copious evidence that it did happen.

As he says in his letter: “At my most recent hearing, Mr Justice Sheldon explicitly stated in front of public observers that I was “lying” about being threatened for costs. He did this in circumstances when he knew my belief in cost threats was robustly grounded on written material from by former barrister Chris Milsom. He also knew that this material was enough to convince 2 MPs, the Telegraph and Financial Times that I had been threatened for costs. Accusing me of lying about cost threats in these circumstances was nothing more than a cheap smear to make me look like a liar in public.”

Or as he wrote earlier: “Dishonest or deluded whistleblowers don’t tend to have the support of former health ministers, senior doctors and the BMA to fund a KC.”

Also there is ample evidence in reports by lawyers that attempts to put costs on whistleblowers are commonplace. Indeed some lawyers moan they can’t get enough of them.

His complaint about ” institutional corruption ” is not directed at individual judges but at the legal system where lawyers socialise with each other and don’t want to see a colleague’s reputation or career damaged by having to admit they got it wrong.

As he says in his letter: “My complaint is not directed solely at individual judges but at the institutional handling of this matter. The EAT has placed judges in an impossible position: adjudicating on issues that, if determined on the evidence, would have serious implications for people with whom they admit to having ongoing professional or social relationships including being connected on social media.
“This is precisely the type of reputational self-protection identified as “institutional corruption” in the
Daniel Morgan inquiry. I am not expecting you or the EAT to do anything about this but want to record
my position and the fact that it has been put to you as EAT president. You will note 2 MPs have called
for a public inquiry into this case.”

The full letter is on the internet here. His account of the case on Linked In is on https://lnkd.in/dZuKkTFG.

My view from covering a number of tribunals- both involving whistleblower doctors, nurses and in the world of industry and the arts – is that lawyers are getting too cosy and comfortable with each other. Add to this the loss of media interest in all but the most lurid of court cases, there are precious few journalists left to observe what is happening in the courts.

All this is to the detriment of the ordinary member of the public when they fight their case. Arraigned against them is a club that knows how to fix the outcome. And this is destroying the principle of open justice and why we need radical reform of both the employment tribunal and county court system.

Pay via Paypal. Use link below.

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/865JAS3QJ3CGQ