NHS chief in ‘£300k payoff’ row
‘A slap in the face for staff and patients’
A CASH-STRAPPED NHS board has handed its former boss a payoff of more than £300,000, it was claimed yesterday.
Lesley McLay was chief executive of crisis-hit NHS Tayside when it siphoned off charitable donations and bequests in wills to plug holes in its finances.
Miss McLay, who has been on sick leave since April, left the NHS board last week.
Yesterday, North East Scotland Labour MSP Jenny Marra claimed the ‘golden goodbye’ for Miss McLay amounted to ‘more than £300,000’.
Miss Marra, who is also convener of the parliament’s audit committee, is now demanding to know ‘who signed off’ the payment.
THE boss of a crisis-hit health board was given a ‘golden goodbye’ pay-off of more than £300,000, an MSP claimed yesterday.
Lesley McLay, former chief executive of NHS Tayside, left the organisation last week.
She had been on sick leave since the day after she was told she could no longer continue in the role in April.
The senior management team was replaced after £2million from a charity endowment fund was used to pay for projects including a new IT system.
Yesterday, after it emerged Miss McLay had gone, Labour MSP Jenny Marra said: ‘It is my understanding today that a golden handshake has been made to Lesley McLay of over £300,000. Quite frankly, I think this is a slap in the face for the staff of NHS Tayside and patients.
‘This is taxpayers’ money being awarded to someone who led NHS Tayside into disarray. It owes the Scottish Government over £40million.’
Miss Marra said she wanted to know ‘who signed off’ the payment, adding: ‘The audit committee in parliament, which I convene, was extremely clear with both the Cabinet Secretary and with NHS Tayside that there should be no golden handshake for, frankly, an abysmal performance as head of that organisation.’
The board’s chairman, Professor John Connell, stood down in April after former Health Secretary Shona Robison wrote to him asking him to resign. She also said former nurse Miss McLay’s position was ‘untenable’.
A new chairman and chief executive were appointed to run NHS Tayside after the health board was put in ‘special measures’ by the Scottish Government.
A spokesman for NHS Tayside said: ‘The claims made about any sum of money received by Ms McLay are categorically untrue.
‘As with any NHS Tayside employee, Ms McLay received what she was contractually entitled to and nothing more upon leaving the organisation.’
Scottish Lib Dem health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ‘Such a sum of money would be enough to pay ten nurses for a year. Allegations of financial mismanagement triggered changes at the top of NHS Tayside. If a payout of this scale was given, we need to know who at the top of the NHS approved it.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘We have been advised by NHS Tayside this claim is categorically untrue and Ms McLay received what she was contractually entitled to and nothing more.’
Other NHS chief executives have received controversial payoffs in recent years.
Richard Carey was given a £255,789 ‘compensation payment’ when he retired from NHS Grampian in 2014 after being embroiled in a staffing row.
James Barbour got £100,000 when he left NHS Lothian in 2012, a month after it was criticised by then Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon for manipulating waiting times.
‘Who signed off the payment?’
IF Lesley McLay has left NHS Tayside with a golden goodbye in excess of £300,000, it is nothing short of a scandal.
The former chief executive went on sick leave and then left her post after details of the financial chaos over which she had presided emerged.
NHS Tayside required a series of huge Government bailouts – totalling more than £33million in five years – and used charity donations to fund an IT system.
Now it is deeply worrying that MSP Jenny Marra claims Miss McLay received a six-figure sum.
That adds insult to injury for those patients on the books of ailing NHS Tayside and is an affront to Scottish taxpayers more generally.
Equally worrying is the secrecy surrounding the whole affair.
NHS Tayside says only that Miss McLay left with what she was ‘contractually entitled to’. It refuses, however, to make plain what the payment was, despite a respected MSP naming a very substantial figure.
This is public money and taxpayers have every right to know what has been spent. The health board’s position is, therefore, untenable. The truth will have to come out eventually.
Miss Marra maintains her figure of more than £300,000 is correct and says: ‘The audit committee in parliament, which I convene, was extremely clear with both the Cabinet Secretary and with NHS Tayside that there should be no golden handshake for, frankly, an abysmal performance as head of that organisation.’
In the NHS and the wider public sector, there should be no payments that are tantamount to rewards for failure.
Nor should this NHS Tayside affair be shrouded in secrecy. The public must be told – to the last penny – how much of their cash has been wasted here.