Financial Times

By Michael Peel, Legal Correspondent

Published: January 15 2008 02:00 | Last updated: January 15 2008 02:00

The Department of Health made a "scapegoat" of a top statistician who 
raised the alarm with senior officials about a contentious 
public-private venture to provide data to the National Health Service, 
an employment tribunal heard yesterday.

Prof Denise Lievesley, former chief executive of the Information Centre, 
the NHS's data factory, says she consistently highlighted concerns about 
the joint venture's worth and its handling of information.

Prof Lievesley's claims are the latest in a series of questions raised 
about the joint venture, known as Dr Foster Intelligence, which a 
committee of MPs last year said had been set up in a "backroom deal" at 
a cost of £12m to the taxpayer.

In an affidavit lodged at Leeds employment tribunal, Prof Lievesley, a 
former Royal Statistical Society president, claims the health department 
let her become a scapegoat for the deal.

Stuart Ritchie, for Prof Lievesley, who was not at the hearing, said she 
had "consistently complained about the joint venture and its operation" 
throughout her two-year tenure at the Information Centre. In her 
affidavit, Professor Lievesley says she felt she had no alternative but 
to sign off in January 2006 on the creation of Dr Foster Intelligence, 
as talks on it were far advanced by the time she arrived at the 
Information Centre in July 2005. She claims she helped the public sector 
secure better terms for the joint venture, which is 50-50 owned by the 
Information Centre and Dr Foster LLP, a successful private health data 
company.

In her affidavit, Prof Lievesley, who was a nonexecutive board member of 
Dr Foster Intelligence, says some data processed by the joint venture 
was not, in her view, "fit for purpose".

She describes an incident last year in which the joint venture included 
unvalidated official hospital data on a prototype website, creating 
"grave" potential to mislead the public. She says she highlighted a 
"wholly inappropriate" use of statistics in letters to senior officials 
including David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS.

Dr Foster hit back at the allegations, saying its data were of a high 
standard and did not mislead the public. The company said: "We 
understand [Prof Lievesley] is in dispute with her former employers but 
do not know the details. We have not seen this affidavit, but we refute 
the criticisms that appear to have been made."

The Dr Foster deal first came under fire in a National Audit Office 
report in February last year, which rebuked the health department for 
failing to follow a proper tendering process and for paying too much for 
its half of the joint venture.

In July the Commons public accounts committee unveiled a stinging report 
on the deal, in which the Information Centre paid £7.6m to Dr Foster LLP 
and sank another £4.4m into the joint venture company.

Prof Lievesley has gone to the employment tribunal to try to revoke a 
confidential deal under which she received a pay-off in exchange for her 
silence about the circumstances surrounding her departure from the 
Information Centre in July.

She says the agreement was unfair as the health department failed to 
point out in public that her exit was unconnected with the criticism of 
the Dr Foster deal made in the Commons public accounts committee report 
a few weeks later.

Her affidavit says: "It is ironic that my reputation should have been 
sullied when I was actually trying to promote the principles of proper 
and ethical access to information."

The Department of Health said it had sought and followed legal and 
professional advice during the creation of the venture. It declined to 
comment on the claim it had made Prof Lievesley a scapegoat, saying it 
could not speak about an ongoing case.

Ben Daniel, for the Information Centre, argued the agreement with Prof 
Lievesley should stand, as it was carefully considered on both sides, 
not a "fly-by-night, rushed exercise".

He said Prof Lievesley had come to the tribunal in part because she was 
worried about the damage caused to her reputation by events subsequent 
to her departure.

The tribunal reserved judgment.


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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Martin Rathfelder
Director
Socialist Health Association
22 Blair Road
Manchester
M16 8NS
0870 013 0065
www.sochealth.co.uk

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