Hospital boss faces probe into her new £240,000 NHS job
MPs have demanded an inquiry after a shamed NHS boss was allowed to keep her £240,000 pay package, despite moving to an ‘advisory’ role.
One politician said last night Katrina Percy was ‘laughing in the face of the public’ after being allowed to keep her huge salary for simply advising a handful of GP practices.
Miss Percy stepped down as chief executive of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust this week following a series of scandals, including a failure to properly investigate hundreds of patient deaths.
It was thought she was leaving Southern Health completely, but the trust, which cares for patients with mental health needs and learning difficulties, said she was moving to a ‘consultancy post’ and keeping her six-figure salary.
The significantly less senior role involves Miss Percy, who already has a pension pot of £500,000, offering advice to a group of 20 GP practices in Hampshire.
Her resignation had followed the publication of an inquiry last year that found trust bosses failed to investigate up to 1,259 ‘unexplained’ deaths because they were not deemed serious enough.
Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames described the decision to offer Miss Percy another highly paid job as ‘absolutely disgusting’ and said it was evidence of an NHS ‘merry-go-round’.
Sir Nicholas called on the public accounts committee (PAC), which oversees spending of taxpayers’ money, to investigate the deal.
‘It seems extraordinary that this astonishing person believes that she can stay on and laugh in the face of the public by being paid this sum,’ he said. ‘There has been a failure of competence and leadership in the first place and also over the use of public money. It is about as bad as you could get.
‘It’s what makes people rightly furious. And I agree with them – it is disgusting behaviour.’
Lib Dem MP John Pugh, a longstanding member of the PAC, added: ‘We have to worry about a culture that rewards demonstrable failure with a less demanding job and an equivalent six-figure salary.
‘I’d love to believe that this is just an isolated instance but it’s a clear pattern in the higher reaches of the NHS. With the health service desperately struggling for cash, such criminal waste of money has got to be questioned and stopped.’
Former Department of Health director for learning disabilities Rob Greig also questioned how the salary for the advisory role had been approved.
He told the BBC: ‘Any reputable job evaluation process would not conclude that those two jobs merited the same salary.’
Miss Percy, 42, who lives in a £580,000 five-bedroom home in the picturesque village of Emsworth, Hampshire, with her husband and child, has worked in the NHS for 16 years and became chief executive in 2011. She first came under scrutiny following the death of 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk, who drowned in the bath at a trust facility in July 2013.
An independent report in December found that 10,306 patients had died under the trust’s care in four years, including 1,454 unexpected deaths. Only 195 were treated as serious incidents by the trust meaning 1,259 deaths were never probed by officials. An investigation by the Care Quality Commission in April warned that patients were still being put at risk because staff were failing to learn from their mistakes.
Connor’s mother, Dr Sara Ryan, said the decision to move Miss Percy to a new post was a ‘scandal’.
She added: ‘This is public money that is paying for this ridiculously over-inflated salary. She failed as a chief executive. How could she possibly keep the same salary?’
After initially claiming her new job would involve working with just 20 GP practices, a Southern Health Trust spokesman yesterday said her role would be wider.
The spokesman added: ‘Katrina’s work will include GPs across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, as well as other NHS and care organisations in the region, including NHS Trusts, commissioners (and) local authorities.’
Ian Birrell – Page 16