GSD Says Professor Burke “Has Not Withdrawn His Allegations of Patient Harm”
The GSD has said that Professor Burke has not withdrawn the truth of his original allegations.
A statement continued: “He may have withdrawn his employment case against the Government but the undeniable fact is that his central complaint that there were systemic issues in GHA that were affecting patient safety and causing preventable harm and death has not been withdrawn. The “agreed” statement is a whitewash plainly entered into after pressure was brought to bear.
“Nothing in the agreed statement addresses the systemic issues at the heart of his 2020 complaints on harm and death. Only an independent investigation on those issues will properly shed light on these serious issues which the public are entitled to have clarified.
“What has actually happened is that the Government has brought pressure to bear on him on the side issue of disclosure of information and forced him to withdraw. This does not affect the issue of the truth of his original allegations or the need for an independent investigation and clinical governance audit of the GHA arising from the issues kicked up by those allegations.”
Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi said: “There is clearly more than meets the eye on the Burke proceedings withdrawal and the Government cannot airbrush away the widely disseminated allegations of systemic failures, patient harm and preventable death. Indeed the Government has now felt able to explain in detail what it is doing and what it says it was committed to do since they received his Report in 2020. That’s as good as saying the allegations must have been true. They did not do so when questioned in Parliament. If they were doing all these things why could they not have said so in Parliament when the GSD raised questions in May 2021? In fact they then disparaged Professor Burke as a charlatan and dismissed his allegations. Is this a recent repackaging of events? The GHA is one of our most important institutions. We all want it to succeed but the Government need to take criticism of systemic failure seriously. Brushing things under the carpet or trashing those who speak out is not the right way to do things.
“Besides it will not be lost on people that the thrust of the “agreed statement” is that the Government is now saying it is dealing with issues brought up by Professor Burke when only a few months ago the Chief Minister misled Parliament by saying there was no shred of evidence on the allegations being made by Professor Burke. It needs to decide which it is. Is it that the allegations were untrue as they said in Parliament or is it that they were true and that they are now dealing with it in accordance with Professor Burke’s report of 2020 to which the Chief Minister is now saying he was committed all along.
“What has really happened here? Has Professor Burke been threatened with the full might of the legal resources of Government as it has previously to silence other critics? Are we seriously being asked to believe that Professor Burke wrote the line that he was worried about the issue being “party-political.” That line can only have come from the pen of the Government which wants to stifle political debate on the truth of these matters. This is a Government that introduced whistle-blowers legislation but when a senior doctor blows the whistle on the way the GHA is run its instinct is to silence criticism. It should, instead, hold an independent investigation to deal with the allegations and allay public concerns. The reality is Professor Burke was sued. When faced with a Government which has the attitude that money is no object in silencing its critics it is not surprising that he would cave in.
“It is completely lacking in credibility to present a statement in which Professor Burke praises the Minister who he now says he worked well with when only a few weeks ago (in an email dated 6 September 2021) he said he only met the Minister for 30 minutes in December 2020, that the Government never took up the offer of a presentation on patient safety and that the Minister “did not discuss my patient safety concerns with me between my email [of October 2020]...and the statement to Parliament on 19 May 2021.” In Parliament the Chief Minister denied the truth of the original allegations and misled Parliament by implying he had not received any material to substantiate the claims.”
Mr Azopardi added: “This is akin to a condemned man signing any piece of paper with a gun to his head. The Government cannot audit and congratulate itself on dealing with the systemic issues. Confidence will not be restored until there is an independent external audit. This self-congratulatory statement is a monument to a rewriting of the truth of what happened and does not affect the original allegations which have not been withdrawn.
“No one believes this is a conversion on the road to Damascus by someone who was ill at the time and missed the departmental memo.”
