Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
MONDAY 29 JANUARY 2001
MR NIGEL
CRISP AND
MR MARTIN
GORHAM
60. I am rather surprised at that, to be honest,
because I would have thought it would be an obvious question the
Committee would be asking.
(Mr Crisp) Right.
61. By all means come back on that. Now, he
was sacked without any compensation whatsoever, which again is
very unusual.
(Mr Crisp) Right.
62. His Chief Executive was also dismissed.
(Mr Crisp) Yes.
63. Now, the Chief Executive, on the other hand,
did receive compensation. To what extent was he less at fault
than the Chairman? Why did one receive compensation and another
not, or did one have a better lawyer than the other?
(Mr Crisp) My understanding of the situation, but
again I think I may have to come back to you on this, is that
we are actually talking about different arrangements for the employment
of the Chairman and the employment of the Chief Executive. I am
sorry I am not able to answer that.
64. You see, you are presenting us with a genuine
problem here.
(Mr Crisp) Right.
65. In that in a way the fact you are helps
a point of view several of us hold because we find that normally
we are told you are like the monarchy, there is a continuous flow.
(Mr Crisp) Right.
66. The Accounting Officer is dead, long live
the Accounting Officer.
(Mr Crisp) Yes.
67. Therefore, the fact there has been a change
of Accounting Officer should make no difference whatsoever to
the nature of the advice we are given.
(Mr Crisp) Yes.
68. Here it is clear that there is a difference.
I am not criticising you. It does, in a way, undermine some of
the arguments from some of your Permanent Secretary colleagues
who do not like the practice we are developing of calling back
witnesses from the past.
(Mr Crisp) Okay. Let me apologise, first of all, for
not having actually expected you to ask this question, and therefore
not getting myself briefed. I have actually now just ascertained
that the position that I thought was the case is the case. That
is that the Chief Executive had a contract and the Chairman did
not, and that is typically so of special health authorities. Different
conditions therefore apply to Chairs as they do to Chief Executives.
Therefore, the issue with the Chief Executive is that you have
to go through all the normal processes you go through with an
employee—
69. In sacking the Chief Executive he got six
months' pay. What did that amount to?
(Mr Crisp) £43,000.
70. He received £43,000. Then there was
breach of contract. What did he receive for that?
(Mr Crisp) £65,000.
71. £65,000. Then there was a contribution
to his pension.
(Mr Crisp) Yes, of £124,000.
72. £124,000. So he ended up with £232,000
for making a mess of his job. Think what he would have got if
he had got performance pay on top of it?
(Mr Crisp) Yes.
73. You must have really wanted to get rid of
him.
(Mr Crisp) He also had a contract within which we
have to operate and the grounds for terminating the contract were
such that there was a liability for a claim for damages for breach
of contract.
74. I suppose it is an alternative route to
going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It is not bad,
is it, for failure, a quarter of a million pounds?
(Mr Crisp) May I just make the additional point that,
of course, he did not actually get the additional £124,000
in money, that went into his pension account.
75. I am sure he might be inclined to feel he
got it.
(Mr Crisp) Right.
76. If you feel it does not make a lot of difference,
if you would like to put £124,000 into the pension account
of each one of us sitting here, I am sure we would be grateful
and we would acknowledge that we had received some material benefit
from it.
(Mr Crisp) I understand the point.
77. It does not take a lot of understanding,
does it.
(Mr Crisp) There is a contractual issue here.
78. We have come across this before.
(Mr Crisp) The Chief Executives in this sort of position
are entitled to appropriate contracts of employment.
79. One looks at someone like this who makes
a mess of his job and then you look at haemophiliacs who have
been infected with HIV and they are innocent victims and you look
at the way they are treated. It was the fault of the Service that
it happened.
(Mr Crisp) I understand the point that you are making
on that. We need to run a Blood Service that is both safe and
responsive to its customers, as Mr Rendel has been stressing,
and employs people in a proper and appropriate way.
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