The troubled health watchdog that is accused of covering up a report into the deaths of mothers and babies at a maternity unit issued at least 20 “gagging orders” to prevent former members of staff from speaking out.
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| Furness General Hospital, where errors killed mothers and as many as 16 babies |
The Care Quality Commission, which has come under fire for its behaviour over
the scandal at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust’s maternity
unit, spent nearly £17 million of taxpayers’ money in redundancy payments
for as many as 400 staff in the past four years.
Of these, at least 20 were bound by secrecy orders preventing them from
speaking publicly about the failings of the organisation.
The majority of the redundancies – 249 – were made in 2009, when the
organisation was created from a merger of the Healthcare Commission, the
Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission.
But the largest number of confidentiality clauses were imposed in the years
after the majority of surplus staff had left the organisation.
The commission, which recently appointed a new chief executive and board of
directors, said it had stopped using the clauses because they gave the
public the impression it had something to hide.
In 2010/11, eight such confidentiality orders were issued to staff who left
the organisation, with another eight imposed the following year.
Health campaigners will be troubled both by number of gagging orders, and the size of the redundancy bill, at a time when CQC insiders were complaining that the organisation was overstretched and under-resourced.
One payment alone came to £190,000 in 2010/11, with the next highest amounting to more than £164,000.
The total sum paid out is thought to be even greater than the £16.73 million admitted by the CQC because it refused to disclose the total figure for the last financial year (2012/13), saying it would be contained in its annual report next month.
The figures, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph through freedom of information legislation, will confirm the fears of critics that the CQC spent millions disbanding teams of expert inspectors, who were trained in assessing the performance of specific departments and disciplines, and replaced them with generic inspectors who had little expertise in the fields they were examining.
The CQC is struggling to recover from adverse publicity after it was disclosed that its board suppressed a report of an inspection of Morecambe trust, which is at the centre of a police investigation after the deaths of at least eight mothers and babies.
Among the 20 members of staff gagged was Dr Heather Wood, who led the investigation that uncovered the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, where as many as 1,200 patients died unnecessarily.
Dr Wood and her team at the Healthcare Commission spent nine months getting to the bottom of the problems at Stafford, but, when the commission was replaced by the CQC in 2009, the central investigation team where she worked was broken up and its responsibilities devolved to regional branches.
In evidence to the Francis inquiry into the Stafford scandal, Dr Wood, who left the watchdog in 2010, said changes to the way hospitals were regulated meant another such scandal would “almost certainly” go undetected.
She accused regulators of being incapable of detecting failings and unwilling to “rock the boat” by exposing them.
Dr Wood said last night: “The gagging orders issued by the CQC were part of a pattern which reflected the fact the senior managers of the commission simply did not want to listen to anybody who raised concerns about the way it was being run or what was happening out there.
“For people to raise their concerns was seen as a negative thing, and line managers made it very clear that it wasn’t something you were encouraged to do.”
Dr Wood said she hoped the CQC’s new chief executive, David Behan, and new chairman, David Prior, would lead to a more open and transparent organisation.
But she added: “They got rid of expert people at considerable cost. They may well now incur extra cost trying to replace them if they want to go back to the previous system of investigation teams.”
Such was the fear of the CQC’s gagging orders that one witness to the Stafford inquiry, Roger Davidson, the former head of external affairs at the Healthcare Commission, appeared only after its chairman, Robert Francis QC, issued him with a subpoena in order to override the confidentiality clause in his redundancy agreement.
He told the inquiry that he wanted the number of estimated deaths at Stafford Hospital to be included in a damning Healthcare Commission report. “My impression was that the Department of Health put significant pressure on Sir Ian Kennedy [Healthcare Commission chairman] and Anna Walker [chief executive] to take the estimated figures out,” he said.
A spokesman for the CQC said the confidentiality clauses were similar to those used by other organisations.
He admitted they had come to be regarded by the public as secrecy orders preventing whistle-blowers from speaking out. He said: “We no longer use them as we realise they could be, and were, seen as gagging clauses. We have given a very clear signal that we want to be an open, transparent and accountable organisation.”
Health campaigners will be troubled both by number of gagging orders, and the size of the redundancy bill, at a time when CQC insiders were complaining that the organisation was overstretched and under-resourced.
One payment alone came to £190,000 in 2010/11, with the next highest amounting to more than £164,000.
The total sum paid out is thought to be even greater than the £16.73 million admitted by the CQC because it refused to disclose the total figure for the last financial year (2012/13), saying it would be contained in its annual report next month.
The figures, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph through freedom of information legislation, will confirm the fears of critics that the CQC spent millions disbanding teams of expert inspectors, who were trained in assessing the performance of specific departments and disciplines, and replaced them with generic inspectors who had little expertise in the fields they were examining.
The CQC is struggling to recover from adverse publicity after it was disclosed that its board suppressed a report of an inspection of Morecambe trust, which is at the centre of a police investigation after the deaths of at least eight mothers and babies.
Among the 20 members of staff gagged was Dr Heather Wood, who led the investigation that uncovered the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, where as many as 1,200 patients died unnecessarily.
Dr Wood and her team at the Healthcare Commission spent nine months getting to the bottom of the problems at Stafford, but, when the commission was replaced by the CQC in 2009, the central investigation team where she worked was broken up and its responsibilities devolved to regional branches.
In evidence to the Francis inquiry into the Stafford scandal, Dr Wood, who left the watchdog in 2010, said changes to the way hospitals were regulated meant another such scandal would “almost certainly” go undetected.
She accused regulators of being incapable of detecting failings and unwilling to “rock the boat” by exposing them.
Dr Wood said last night: “The gagging orders issued by the CQC were part of a pattern which reflected the fact the senior managers of the commission simply did not want to listen to anybody who raised concerns about the way it was being run or what was happening out there.
“For people to raise their concerns was seen as a negative thing, and line managers made it very clear that it wasn’t something you were encouraged to do.”
Dr Wood said she hoped the CQC’s new chief executive, David Behan, and new chairman, David Prior, would lead to a more open and transparent organisation.
But she added: “They got rid of expert people at considerable cost. They may well now incur extra cost trying to replace them if they want to go back to the previous system of investigation teams.”
Such was the fear of the CQC’s gagging orders that one witness to the Stafford inquiry, Roger Davidson, the former head of external affairs at the Healthcare Commission, appeared only after its chairman, Robert Francis QC, issued him with a subpoena in order to override the confidentiality clause in his redundancy agreement.
He told the inquiry that he wanted the number of estimated deaths at Stafford Hospital to be included in a damning Healthcare Commission report. “My impression was that the Department of Health put significant pressure on Sir Ian Kennedy [Healthcare Commission chairman] and Anna Walker [chief executive] to take the estimated figures out,” he said.
A spokesman for the CQC said the confidentiality clauses were similar to those used by other organisations.
He admitted they had come to be regarded by the public as secrecy orders preventing whistle-blowers from speaking out. He said: “We no longer use them as we realise they could be, and were, seen as gagging clauses. We have given a very clear signal that we want to be an open, transparent and accountable organisation.”
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