Superbug payout for health chief

Rose Gibb, former chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent, went to court after the Government withheld a severance payment she was offered in return for her resignation following the Clostridium difficile (C.diff) outbreak in which 90 people died.

Lord Justice Sedley said in his ruling: "It seems that the making of a public sacrifice to deflect press and public obloquy, which is what happened to the appellant, remains an accepted expedient of public administration."

But former Bucks Fizz singer Cheryl Baker, whose mother-in-law Doreen Ford died at Maidstone Hospital in Kent in 2008 at the age of 77 after contracting C.diff, called on Ms Gibb to hand over the money to the families whose loved ones died at hospitals run by the trust.

She said she would be happy to join other families in contesting the decision, describing it as an "outrage" to all who lost friends and relatives in the outbreak.

"I lose faith in the British justice system when decisions like this are made," she said.

"My children have been robbed of their grandmother and I think it's an outrage that this woman has walked away with this money."

In April last year, the High Court dismissed Ms Gibbs's claim to enforce the terms of the package, but she was later given permission to take her case to the Court of Appeal.

Three judges heard her appeal in March and yesterday delivered a ruling ordering the trust to pay her 190,284 damages plus the costs of the court hearings.

Ms Gibb left her 150,000-a-year post in October 2007, days before a highly critical report attacked the spread of C.diff on overcrowded and dirty wards.

Because she left by mutual agreement, she was in line for a 250,000 severance package consisting of 174,573 compensation and 75,427 notice pay.

The payment was blocked after the Department of Health's intervention, although she

eventually received the notice money.

The appeal revolved around whether the High Court got it wrong in finding that the trust was acting beyond its powers in agreeing to the severance deal, and that the trust was not "unjustly enriched" by avoiding paying her compensation for unfair dismissal as the failure to pursue such a claim lay at her door.

The damages award was for the amount of the severance package plus interest of 15,000.

Lord Justice Sedley said High Court judge Mr Justice Treacy had got it wrong by letting himself be drawn into acting more as auditor than judge.

"On the scale of severance payments, not only in the private sector but in parts of the public sector, 240,000 was not on its face outlandish compensation for the arbitrary termination of a career which it was unlikely Ms Gibb would be able to resume or resurrect," he said.

"Central Government (which, it seems, will be picking up the bill) might have done better to recognise that the Trust, in reaching the agreement, had been making the best of a bad job; and perhaps better still to recognise that the bad job had been the decision, which the Department does not appear to have cavilled at, to sacrifice on the altar of public relations a senior official who had done nothing wrong."

He ended his ruling: "Perhaps those responsible will now reflect that, since such blame as the report allocated was subsequently accepted by the trust's board , all of whom resigned following publication of the report, there had been no good reason to dismiss the CEO; and that all this money, both compensation and costs, could have been spent on improving hygiene and patient care in trust hospitals."