Let’s face it: there are a few things they don’t teach you at medical school.

One of them is what to do when the NHS decides you are the problem in a whistleblowing case.

I have spent the last twelve years learning this lesson and have had some interesting tutors.

I was a resident doctor in a South London Intensive Care Unit when I raised concerns about night-time staffing levels. The sort of concerns that make NHS executives stop smiling mid-sentence. The sort of concerns that later get described as “serious” once enough time has passed and enough lawyers have been paid.

Eventually, after six years, several courts, and a small forest’s worth of paper, those concerns were accepted as protected disclosures. They were linked to two avoidable deaths which, at the time, were quietly removed from formal investigations. That part is now officially undisputed.

What is disputed is what happened next.

1/6 The Helpful Fiction 2/6

In the UK, there is a comforting bedtime story we tell ourselves about judges.

It goes something like this: judges are neutral, wise, objective people who simply weigh evidence on a set of invisible scales. Sometimes they get it wrong, but only in the way a GP occasionally misdiagnoses hay fever as a cold.

Bias, we’re told, is rare. Structural bias rarer still. And if something truly mad happens, appeal courts will rush in wearing capes to put everything right.

My case is what happens when that story collapses and crawls under the sofa.

When you start out as a doctor there are many things you expect to lose: sleep, weekends, vitamin D, any realistic hope of owning a property.

What you do not expect to lose is whistleblowing protection for the entire nation’s doctors during a court hearing.

In 2015, the courts accepted an argument so astonishing it should have come with its own laugh track: that Health Education England - the body funding doctors, controlling where they work, how they train, how they’re assessed, and whether their careers live or die - was apparently not responsible for junior doctors, or in legal terms, had no substantial influence over them.

This legal sleight of hand  removed 54,000 doctors from whistleblowing protection for 4 years.

Not because Parliament intended it. Not because the law demanded it. But because lawyers said it, and two judges went along with it.

The purpose was to stop my whistleblowing case ever being heard by a court.

The commissioning contracts proving this was nonsense existed the entire time. They were not disclosed. When they finally surfaced five years later, it turned out they had been drafted by the same law firm making vast sums of public money advancing the very argument they contradicted.

A former health minister later described this in Parliament as conduct that “smacks of unethical behaviour”.

The courts felt more comfortable describing it as a “gap in the law” shifting the blame to MPs.

If this were a medical error, we would call it a never event. In law, it was just… Tuesday.

I am a doctor on the frontline in A&E that has been dealing with #COVID__19

£700k has been spent destroying my career and my family's security just to cover up important things I was saying about Intensive Care resourcing.

Help me by watching this

Part 2

We have our Court of Appeal order allowing us to challenge the settlement agreement that stopped my whistleblowing case in its tracks

This matters if U care about Intensive Care resourcing & NHS transparency/whistleblowing. Who doesn't now with #covid19?

crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-… Fantastic work from @JahadRahman1 of @RahmanLowe and @AndrewAllenQC of @outertemple

And of course Jahad's son Zak who filed the papers at the Royal Courts late December with a little help from his Dad.

By not to trying to drastically limit the number of Covids (like other countries). Gov seem to accept that a large part of the 8% that will need ICU but not get it due to resourcing is a price worth paying to avoid economic standstill

Is that a fair summary of Gov's position? This is a response to the above tweet.

https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538?s=19

Seriously people;

Who do you think really suffers when £700k of public money is used against an Intensive Care Unit doctor raising serious safety issues?

And to argue the nation's doctors out of whistleblowing protection to STOP the case being heard?

crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-… How junior doctors were argued out of whistleblowing protection

I don't know what is worse, what they did or how they did it?

Check out this letter from @normanlamb to the CEO of the SRA and also another letter from the Telegraph freelancer @GreeneTommy

54000doctors.org/letters/sra-co…

@bentravisceo

I have been sent email and text message evidence that show.

Your Solicitors instructing your QC to make a 'Without Prejudice Save for Costs" drop hands offer with a costs threat on Friday 5 October 2018.

The question is did you instruct this or did you not know? You would not believe what I had to do to get hold of the text message proving this.

I'm definitely going to write a book if this case is not heard properly.

1/2

I have now seen 3 @CrowdJustice funded Court of Appeal cases of doctor v establishment. 2 were whistleblowing cases.

I am absolutely astonished to see how huge principles of public interest are defeated in the lower courts just by attacking the individual doctor.

https://twitter.com/drcmday/status/1197201110399930370

@Edwin1432 is a terrible person is not an answer to;

1. An NHS leader of a children's hospital providing a false statement to Parliament about the scope & findings of investigations into serious safety issues.

2. ET Judge saying false statement is setting the record straight

It was hard doing the A&E locum shift today given what happened yesterday.

A lot of kind words & support from colleagues and DISBELIEF that a Judge could decide the cost threat application without witness evidence from the managers and lawyers involved in my October Tribunal.

https://twitter.com/drcmday/status/1195104185483698183

My personal favourite;

Chris you will be the first claimant in history to have go all the way to the Court of Appeal twice just to get to cross examine witnesses at an employment tribunal.

A year after being threatened out of cross examining the 14 witnesses in my NHS whistleblowing case. We are back in the London South Employment Tribunal on 1 October.

Grateful to @GreeneTommy & @drphilhammond for smelling a rat and investigating. Thread

crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-… 2/4
October 2018

Shortly after the settlement agreement @PrivateEyeNews ran this piece on my case. 'Safety Catch'

At this time I was unable to speak openly about the various cost regulator threats

crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-…

Why was my role as a night time doctor in an Intensive Care Unit and my career worth so little.

Yet the careers of senior managers worth spending £700k protecting.

crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-… Why did the public pay £700k to defend these screenshots and destroy my career and the security of my family?

crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-…

EAT have directed that HEE and its lawyers @HillDickinson must respond to our wasted costs application by no later than the 1 August.

I and MP @normanlamb have attempted to get an explanation.

54000doctors.org/letters/letter… Using the legal system to get justice reminds me of my work as an A&E doctor.

You have to try and get the right result in an overstretched broken system that is generally trying to do its best for people.

Similarities break down somewhat with the NHS lawyers on £700k!

@AWhistleblowing report out today . Government will have to respond to the shameful reality of how people that defend the public interest are treated in this country

@stevemiddi1 @normanlamb @BaronessKramer have done a great job making sure valuable voices are heard. Great to see @BankConfidenti1 and @stevemiddi1 at today's @AWhistleblowing report launch.

Mark Wright has paid a heavy price for defending the U.K economy. Will he ever get justice?

Glad to hear @normanlamb representing him in Parliament. We need people like Mark in banks.

£700k to crush a Junior Doctor - Don't let them get away with it.
crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-…

Me in 2016 on ITV News explaining the scandal of public money being used to argue junior doctors out of whistleblowing protection to stop my case being heard. We put it right in CofA This is the reaction I got from the future PM @Jeremy_Hunt when I asked him about allowing the nation's junior doctors to be argued out of whistleblowing protection on the taxpayer to stop my case being heard.
Find out how they did it
crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-…

What is whistleblowing? It is probably not what you think it is and whistleblowing protection is most definitely not what you think it is.

My full talk at @BAPIOUK can be viewed here Was putting whistleblowing law in the Employment Rights Act really such a smart move? There are so many more organisations other than an employer that can harm a doctor. What about other industries?