But MPs say 'confidential severance payments should have been questioned'
Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS in England, has denied covering-up the existence of gagging orders included in severance packages.
But MPs accused Nicholson of either being "complicit in a cover-up" or of failing to ask questions about confidential exit payments made to staff during a Public Accounts Committee evidence session.
Concerns about former NHS staff being gagged with such agreements hit the headlines earlier his year when Gary Walker, formerly head of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, claimed he was “forced to quit” then prevented from talking about the poor patient safety practices he had witnessed.
The row over payments to gag departing staff centres on "judicial mediation", which the NHS uses to resolve employment disputes with staff. An employment judge acts as mediator to help the employer and employee reach an agreement sometimes involving a severance payout. The committee said that the NHS had spent £2m on such payments since 2008. However, it was not confirmed whether the agreements all included gagging clauses.
From April 2013, the Treasury started approving the payments. However, Nicholson denied that the agreements had been used to silence staff prior to that.
"I take my responsibilities to Parliament really seriously... and I'm absolutely and at all times honest in what I do,” he told the committee.
"I can absolutely refute I have ever been involved in any kind of cover-up in relation to the expenditure identified. I have been absolutely honest and truthful with this committee." Nicholson said that compromise agreements were widely used in the NHS and by many employers in other sectors adding: “[They do not] necessarily mean someone has been stopped [from] speaking about patient safety.
"To connect the two all the time is, I think, erroneous and wrong."