Health secretary Andy Burnham is coming under pressure to investigate the unfair treatment of NHS whistleblowers. 

More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling on Burnham to explain why suspended consultant pediatrician Dr Kim Holt, who was vindicated by an investigation after she criticised the clinic which sent Baby P home to die, has not been reinstated. 

Holt has spent the last three years on paid “special leave” after warning - more than a year before Baby P came to the clinic in Haringey - that she and other doctors there were dangerously overworked and a child would die unless action was taken.

In December 2009, her employer, Great Ormond Street Hospital, promised to reach a “swift and amicable solution” and implement the recommendations of an NHS London report. One of these was that Holt had done nothing wrong and should be reinstated. 

At one point the trust offered her £120,000 if she would sign a statement saying all her concerns had been addressed, an offer she rejected on the grounds that it would have be “fraudulent” of her to do so.

The petition, organised by a group of doctors, calls for Holt to be reinstated and urges Burnham to explain why a service that is stretched to dangerous levels has been denied the skills of an experience paediatrician at great public expense. 

It also asks him to explain why professionals who attempt to raise concerns about systemic failures in the NHS continue to be treated so negatively. The group has also sent a letter The Lancet asking why Holt should not be reinstated when the GMC code of conduct obliges doctors to raise concerns about patient safety.

Holt’s case follows that of Ramon Niekrash who won an employment tribunal case against Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich, after he was victimised for raising concerns about cost cutting.  

In another whistleblowing scandal, in February, an inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal heard that medical staff who tried to warn of failings at the trust were threatened into silence by NHS managers.

Holt’s MP Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, has also challenged Burnham by tabling some parliamentary questions asking why Holt has not been reinstated.

She said: “It is an appalling waste of public money not to allow Kim back to work. The investigation found she was an exemplary pediatrician with a flawless track record who should be reinstated with mediation.

“The NHS London report was quite damming.  It said there were management failures but non of the recommendations addressed those issues, they only applied to getting Kim back to work. I thought this was a cop out. 

Featherstone said the report in particular did not address the fact that management failed to take on board the warnings of four senior consultant paediatricians who signed a letter to saying children were in danger. “The hospital basically turned on the messenger,” she said.

Holt said: ”This is about the quality of children’s services, the fact that people should be able to raise concerns without fear of losing their jobs, the use of money to try and silence people and poor management of people and resources. It is a much bigger issue than just my job now, this has ramifications for the whole of the NHS.

“I am still being victimised and not being allowed to do the job I love. I am currently working on secondment but it is not a proper job. This sends a very bad message to other doctors.” 

A spokesman for GOSH said they were unable to respond to the criticisms: “We don’t feel we can run a process of mediation and debate the fine detail in public at the same time. We are absolutely committed to trying to find a mutually satisfactory resolution to these issues as fast as we can.”

Holt questioned whether the trust were committed to the process with four months having elapsed since the NHS London report, and suggested the recommendations were too vague.

A consultant has won a landmark whistleblowing victory against NHS managers who tried to silence him when he spoke out against cuts.

Ramon Niekrash, a consultant urologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in south London, told Hospital Dr he hopes his case will now act as a “big stick” to deter other trusts from bullying their critics.

He has also criticised the amount of taxpayers’ money that the trust wasted in pursuing their vendetta against him.

“Managers used substantial amounts of taxpayers’ money with no accountability to silence a critic who in actual fact was trying to defend and support the patient. The taxpayers’ money hasn’t gone towards medical care it has been spent on silencing me.”

Niekrash was branded a troublemaker and suspended for ten weeks after he repeatedly raised concerns about patient safety.

An industrial tribunal has now ruled that his treatment, specifically his exclusion from the hospital, was in breach of whistleblowing legislation.

In a series of letters from 2005 Niekrash raised concerns about the closure of a urology ward; a cut in the number of specialist urology nurses; hospital acquired infections; the health and safety of patients and the trust’s clinical governance obligations. 

He also complained about his contract and the job planning process and made allegations of widespread bullying and harassment in the surgical directorate in an attempt to achieve cost cuts.

The vast majority of letters received no response which prompted him to write further letters.

When he was suspended the medical staffing committee threatened to hold a vote of no confidence in the management which resulted in Niekrash being reinstated after ten weeks.

The tribunal ruled that letters written by the trust around the time of Niekrash’s whistleblowing were defamatory. It also found he suffered loss of reputation and private practice and injury to health and feelings as a result of his suspension. A separate hearing will decide on the level of compensation he will be awarded.

Niekrash said he had had to pursue the case in order to protect his reputation and because it was his moral duty as a doctor to protect his patients. 

“I genuinely believed there was a moral issue. I did nothing for any pecuniary interest other than that which was genuinely for the benefit of the patient,” he said.

Arpita Dutt, partner at Russell Jones & Walker, who represented Niekrash, said it was difficult for a whistleblower to win a case because the legalities were complex. This meant any successful whistleblowing case was a landmark because it exposed issues in public services that were of wider interest to the general public.

Dutt said: “This case is also is a salient warning because we are in times of public spending cuts and we are seeing A&E departments and wards threatened with closure so there is likely to be an increase in this sort of tension that gives rise to whistleblowing.

“This means we have to be on guard for employers and NHS trusts taking this sort of attitude to whistleblowers. This case certainly sends out a strong message that should resonate throughout all public services.”

A South London Healthcare NHS Trust spokesperson pointed out that the incidents took place prior to the establishment in April 2009 of South London Healthcare NHS Trust, which now manages the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

She said: “There are lessons to be learned from this case and the new trust absolutely believes in the importance of whistleblowing and encourages any staff members with concerns about patient safety to bring them to the attention of their managers straight away. We now have an environment and the correct processes in place so staff can feel confident that they can raise concerns without any fear. We are assured that the issues which led to this case would not have occurred under the new trust management.”