Spared jail, NHS chief who paid her husband £11k for job he hadn’t done

AN NHS chief executive escaped a jail sentence yesterday despite defrauding her own hospital.

Paula Vasco- Knight, 53, used public money to pay her husband Stephen £11,000 for work he never completed.

They were each handed suspended jail terms at Exeter Crown Court. Gareth Evans, prosecuting, said Mrs VascoKnight was on £200,000 a year as chief executive of South Devon Foundation Trust and as ‘lead equality officer’ for the NHS.

But in 2012 she used hospital cash to buy an Apple computer with design software. Mr VascoKnight, 46, used it for the firm he ran from their garden shed.

That year his wife won a £10,000 leadership bursary and he later submitted an £11,072 invoice to the bursary fund for apparently producing a 200-page business leadership document. This turned out to be a 29-page notebook with much of the material lifted from other sources.

Mrs Vasco-Knight produced a longer document but police dis- Ashamed: Paula Vasco-Knight covered this had been put together in haste. ‘They made an amateurish attempt to cover their tracks,’ said Mr Evans.

Mrs Vasco-Knight’s barrister, Lloyd Morgan, said she had risen from humble beginnings as a nurse to running Torbay Hospital with its 4,000 staff.

‘She fully admits her dishonesty and is most ashamed,’ added Mr Morgan.

Mrs Vasco-Knight, now living in Runcorn, Cheshire, admitted fraud during her trial in January. Her husband admitted fraud by making a false representation.

The court heard she had been left jobless, virtually homeless and had needed hospital treatment for mental health issues.

Yesterday she collapsed and was treated by paramedics after being sentenced to 16 months in jail, suspended for two years. Mr Vasco-Knight received a suspended sentence of ten months.

Mrs Vasco-Knight left her Torbay job for a £1,000-a-day posting in Lancashire and then moved to St George’s Hospital in London, one of the country’s largest teaching hospitals.

She became chief executive in April 2016 but within weeks was suspended after ‘serious financial allegations’ arose from her time in Devon.

The Health Service’s first ever black chief executive, Mrs VascoKnight was awarded a CBE for ‘services to nursing’ in January 2014 – an award which will now be taken away.

Yesterday she sat shaking and sobbing in the dock as details of the fraud were revealed.

The judge ordered Mrs VascoKnight to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work. Her husband must complete 150 hours.

The pair will have to pay £11,000 to cover NHS investigation costs and face a proceeds of crime hearing to recover the missing £11,072.