Express & Star Comment: Whistleblowers should be protected

As a whistleblower, he should have been able to expect his anonymity to be preserved.

What he alleged related to treatment given to 55 cancer patients under the care of the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust.

The treatment they were given was not recommended, although investigations have found no wrongdoing and that no patients were harmed as a result.

The Express & Star has chosen not to name the whistleblower, even though others have.

The trust is entitled to respond to allegations and to defend itself vigorously.

Yet there is nothing to achieve from 'outing' the identity of the person who reported them.

And there is something unseemly about the way it has been done in this case.

It should make anyone who believes in the NHS feel very uneasy.

All it will do is deter anyone else from confiding their concerns in the authorities later on.

A cynic might think that this was the idea all along and that by naming him they could draw attention to different matters that might undermine the case he has brought to their attention.

We would like to believe that the trust in charge of New Cross Hospital is better than that.

It has handled major challenges and changing times in the health service with great skill.

But it must now assure anyone working for it that their concerns will be listened to and their identities protected, as the man who oversaw the inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal, Sir Robert Francis, insisted at the time.

Coming as it does at the same time that the trust which ran Stafford Hospital faces criminal charges related to the deaths of four patients – one as recent as last year– it is hardly a good time for the NHS in the Midlands.

Indeed the earlier Stafford Hospital scandal showed just what can happen when people are cowed into staying silent, rather than raising their heads above the parapet.

The NHS is an enormous organisation.

It is the greatest institution this country has ever produced, or indeed ever will.

That does not make it immune from mistakes or decisions that will attract criticism and demand greater scrutiny.

Indeed the sheer scale of the NHS means that there will always be things that could be done better. It must exist in a state of constant improvement and evolution, not of closing ranks for fear of being seen to have acted wrongly.

An organisation as respected as the NHS must be open to being told that things have not been done as well as they should and to acting upon them.

That does not mean it must always accept the criticism is correct, just that it must look at it and assess it to make sure it did everything properly.

The whistleblower at the centre of this issue resigned voluntarily from the Wolverhampton trust last year amid misconduct allegations. This should have no bearing whatsoever on the validity or otherwise of the concerns he raised.

It is an entirely separate case and must be dealt with separately.

He should have been able to make his concerns known and to have them considered for what they are, free from any aspersions cast about his own career.

The NHS will only improve if it is prepared to hear criticisms and take a long, hard look at itself, even when it discovers that the truth is inconvenient.