–A fast climate transition requires solid whistleblowing protection
–‘You cannot ignore NHS Directors destroying evidence in a whistleblowing case and other evidence and call it a fair hearing’
By Mathew Carr
June 17, 2023 — Dr Chris Day, who’s been blowing the whistle on bad practice in the National Health Service of the UK for a decade, said by email he is “grateful to the British Medical Association for supporting 2 separate appeals on the June 2022 hearing of my whistleblowing case.”
“The broad thrust of the appeals are you cannot ignore NHS Directors destroying evidence in a whistleblowing case and other evidence and call it a fair hearing.”
Here is an unedited text of his emailed statement as of June 17, 2023 — I will ask the NHS for a comment / response, let you know what they say
“I have written a Linked In article to take you through the issues in on more depth which can be read here. [I had trouble with his links]
[This link work best: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-chris-day-798790177_read-our-2-bma-backed-appeals-to-the-eat-activity-7075797136809832448-wOJE?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop ]
You can skip the article and just read the legal papers for the 2 appeals here.
My article starts with some questions
1. What do you think would make an NHS Trust’s Director of Communications get up at 5am, travel to one of the Trust’s hospitals and delete an archive of 90,000 emails, the morning before they were due to give evidence in a whistleblowing case?
2. Why would that same NHS Director of Communications choose to admit to permanently destroying evidence, do so in a tribunal statement, then not sign the statement and then decline to be cross examined? (Any IT person will tell you that that it is not possible to permanently delete emails from secure NHS systems and that the suggestion that 90,000 emails could be deleted one morning at the touch of a button is laughable. The Judge swallowed the story but took no action to investigate or even question the people involved. There were also no consequences for the Director or the NHS Trust who went on to win the case)
3. Why would another director at the same Trust who also happened to be the person instructing the NHS lawyers in my whistleblowing case have their entire email account deleted whilst the litigation was still live?
4. Why would an NHS Trust hide for years the record of a Board meeting that approved the contentious 2018 settlement in my whistleblowing case and then take the further risk of instructing their lawyers to deny the existence of the record to a Judge ?
I have no idea what the appeals courts will do with our appeals.”
