Ms. Grant said over the last few days and weeks we have had a whole raft of concerning reports about the situation within some of our Health Trusts impacting on financial and human resources. The Southern Health Trust reported losses of £9.3million for the year ending 31st March 2025 2millon less than the previous year. The largest area of loss is clinical negligence £7.3million. The second largest loss were in employers’ liability and employment law which according to the total cited must come in at £2 million these are serious sums of revenue lost from the public purse and require further examination in the case of clinical negligence the public should be made aware of the number of cases involved without breaching patient confidentiality. In relation to the other two categories more information needs to be clarified without names attached but we need to know how many cases were involved in these categories.
The Workers Party have always called for a duty of candor from the Health and Social Care Trusts and sadly this does not happen until the information is drag out at public inquiries or through whistleblowers. The other concerning report was from a retired Consultant who talked about a toxic working environment and a bullying culture. The keeping of secrets files on individual staff members was not only concerning but a possible breach of employment laws and data protection regulations.
Ms. Grant added the Workers Party for many decades have criticised the department of health and the trusts for continuing to restructure services without dealing with the culture that persists unchecked that impacts patients, services users and staff. It is time to answer these questions, do these financial losses, clinical negligence or employment law related impact patients’ services, what funding streams does the financial losses come from, and what measures are being put in place to deal with these losses.
Ms. Grant finished by saying many of these problems arise in areas were those employed have a major say on how and where services are delivered and it is usually in line with their own interests and priorities not patients. It is now time to deal with the culture that can create havoc in a system that is already in crisis.
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