Top States officials accused of “deeply worrying” treatment of sacked doctor

Friday 02 December 2016

The war of words between two States' Boards has intensified following the decision to fire Amar Alwitry before he started a new job in the Island as a consultant ophthalmologist.

Today, the States Complaints Board (SCB) has published a scathing report on the conduct of the States Employment Board, (SEB) saying they are guilty of “flawed and deeply unsatisfactory” actions, following the decision to sack Dr Alwitry. It even calls for the SEB and senior politicians to be censured for their actions, and says this was, “...one of the worst examples of a public authority disregarding fundamental principles of fairness and law that this board has seen.”

Dr Alwitry had hoped to return to Jersey after a career in the UK, but a job offer was withdrawn after he questioned certain work practices at the General Hospital. He was supposed to start in December 2012, but a week before he was told by the SEB that his contract had been terminated.

The glaucoma specialist said he was told by senior staff to “put up or shut up” when he criticised the level of weekend medical cover. 

Health Minister Andrew Green stood by the decision to sack him; and the SEB, which is lead by Chief Minister Ian Gorst, also criticised a previous SCB report. 

In its reply, the latest SCB report has accused senior States employees and politicans of a “flagrant breach of basic safeguards.”

It goes even further and says this was “one of the worst examples of a public authority disregarding fundamental principles of fairness and law that this board has seen.”

In the same vein it adds: “The fact that SEB and the hospital cannot grasp the basic point is deeply worrying. It is a matter for which they ought to be censured.”

The report, entitled the response of the Complaints Board to SEB’s response, leaves little to the imagination with regard to Dr Alwitry's treatment, who left a post in Derby to return to Jersey four years ago, and has not worked since his sacking.

 The report, presented to the States’ Privileges and Procedures Committee, says: “The Board has received a lengthy but deeply unsatisfactory response from the SEB.

“It is unfortunate that SEB has sought to maintain the description of the events surrounding the termination of Mr. Alwitry’s employment as “the withdrawal of an offer of employment”. The accurate description of SEB’s conduct in this matter was that it deliberately and unlawfully chose to breach Mr Alwitry’s contract of employment by summarily dismissing him in what can only be described as remarkable circumstances: almost every stage of the process both before and after the decision summarily to dismiss Mr Alwitry was flawed.

“The Board agreed with the contemporaneous description of the procedure (or lack of it) that was followed in Mr. Alwitry’s case as “appallingly shabby”. We remain certain that the description is apt. It was appallingly shabby.

“The first concern is the speed with which the Minister for Health and Social Services and SEB rejected the findings of the Report, issuing press releases within days of being provided with a copy of it. We would hope that in the future any department that is the subject of a complaint will respond in detail to the Complaints Board’s Report before trying to argue and spin its case in public.

“Almost the entirety of SEB’s response is aimed at justifying SEB’s position that the dismissal of Mr Alwitry was the ‘right’ decision on the merits.

“The Board was extremely critical of SEB, the hospital and certain senior States employees and politicians who were involved in the decisions relating to Mr Alwitry. Given the tone of SEB’s response, the Board is now concerned that it was not clear enough in its (previous) report.

“We will therefore try to explain the position in simple terms: a decision which was taken in flagrant breach of the basic procedural safeguards to which Mr Alwitry was entitled, cannot, by definition, be the ‘correct’ decision. The present case is one of the worst examples of a public authority disregarding fundamental principles of fairness and contract law that this Board has seen in the long collective experience of the three members. The fact that SEB and the Hospital apparently cannot grasp this basic point is deeply worrying. It is a matter for which they ought to be censured.”

Later on in the report, it says: “There were fundamental flaws in the process adopted by the hospital. Again, SEB can and does repeat extracts from certain witnesses on whose evidence it relies to justify the substantive merits of the decision that was made, but that cannot alter the conclusion that the decision was procedurally flawed at almost every stage in the process.

“We doubt very much that we are alone in being genuinely stunned that SEB would continue to seek to rely on the unrecorded, anecdotal evidence of people about telephone calls as justifying the summary dismissal.”

The report even says other similar failures could also happen as the SEB has not learnt from its mistakes.

It says: “It is not satisfied from the response that the circumstances which resulted in this complaint could not now be replicated, or there is not a more widespread problem at the Hospital in relation to the management of these types of decisions.”

A States spokesman said: "The SEB does not routinely comment on individual matters where legal issues are in train or in contemplation."