Whistle Blowing. Super Injunctions and Parliament.

I do quite a lot of whistleblowing cases. I think the attitudes of the NHS Trusts is best shown up by the Lawyers they employ who advise them cynically as to how they can avoid responsibility.

Patient care and protection of junior members of staff is shockingly absent from the attitudes of the unelected members of Trust Boards.

I recently represented a female PA who tried to point out the ridiculous situation she found herself in with a too large caseload which was never covered when she went away of holiday or when she was off sick.  She was afraid for the safety of patients given she was PA to a Senior Consultant/Head of Surgery.

They did nothing to address her concerns.

She went off sick unexpectedly.

Her Manager made an excuse to search her desk, 'found some uncompleted work' (filing) and then had her subjected to disciplinary proceedings.

She made it plain from the outset she wanted this woman sacked.

Her husband contacted me due to my having helped him with a super injunction granted against him for trying to WB about toxicity in the water tanks of Cruise liners which he found when he was inspecting the Paint in the Tanks.

I had his case raised in Parliament by John Hemmings and there was a story recently in the Sunday Times.

I found they were out to get her and so I went after them; represented her in the disciplinary proceedings which were a farce - had her case thrown out.

She returned to work and then 2 days later; they informed her she would have to be moved anyway because she made her Consultant uncomfortable.

This could have amounted to the end but we filed an IT1 for WB and eventually just lost in the EAT - all the way through the Trust and their lawyers tried everything to have the case thrown out even directly misleading the Tribunal; complaining about me to the Information Commissioners and the Tribunal Regulators and even threatening me with the Police!

We very nearly won and the sad thing is we only lost through the other side cheating but such is the 'plight' of WBs in the NHS.  The Solicitors attitude was 'she is only a Secretary and we can move her whenever the management wanted to'. All of this took a couple of years to resolve.

They tried to have the case struck out 9 times; failing everytime and lying to the Tribunal and conducting the most foul personal attacks on me.

I was shocked by the whole situation people find themselves in. 

But I did something about it and at least the person kept her job.