David Loughton, who earned £260,000 last year, has been allowed to keep his job despite using taxpayers’ money to fight staff who raised serious concerns about patient safety.

The review into how Mr Loughton’s hospital trust is being run would only go as far as saying that he had ‘an impulsive and honest style’. It appears he will now face no disciplinary action and no sanctions will be taken against him.

Whistleblowers who were forced out of their jobs by Mr Loughton were not even interviewed for the report, and only found out the review had been published when contacted by the Mail.

In a further twist, it has emerged that the consultancy firm chosen by the NHS to do the review has been paid £78,837 by Mr Loughton’s trust for other jobs this year.

Deloitte was paid £45,444 for the review by watchdog NHS Improvement.
Mr Loughton, 62, chief executive at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, is renowned for fighting whistleblowers through the courts.

They include leading heart surgeon Dr Raj Mattu, who was vilified and sacked after he exposed that two patients had died in dangerously overcrowded bays in a hospital at another trust run by Mr Loughton.

Dr Mattu was cleared at a tribunal and in February was awarded £1.2million damages.

Manager Sandra Haynes Kirkbright was also suspended after raising concerns that Mr Loughton’s Woverhampton trust had mis-recorded deaths, making it look like fewer patients had died needlessly.

An investigation into her case condemned the trust for its ‘significantly flawed’ and ‘unfair’ treatment.

It described an account of how Mr Loughton made sure Mrs Haynes Kirkbright was ‘out of the way’ before a visit from hospital inspectors, telling staff to ‘kick this into the long grass’.

After the report into her case was published in May, NHS watchdogs ordered a review into the management of Mr Loughton’s hospital trust. But the results of that review were only quietly published on the trust’s website earlier this week. And it emerged that Deloitte was instructed to focus on the hospital as it is now, rather than considering previous whistleblowing cases.

As a result, the report’s authors did not contact Dr Mattu, Mrs Haynes Kirkbright or former board members who have criticised the management. They did not check what they were told by Mr Loughton and his employees, writing in the review: ‘We have assumed that the information provided to us and management’s representations are complete, accurate and reliable.’

Describing Mr Loughton, the report stated: ‘The chief executive is a strong character with an impulsive style and can attract controversy from time to time. However, he is strongly supported.’ It added: ‘Any past behavioural challenges have tempered in recent years.’

Today Dr Mattu said: ‘They have taken at face value everything management has said. I have great experience of Mr Loughton and he ruthlessly attacks anyone who dissents. He has persecuted whistleblowers. This has been a disgraceful waste of taxpayers’ money.’

Mrs Haynes Kirkbright said: ‘I was not consulted at all on this report. I didn’t know a thing about it until the Mail told me.’

Professor David Ferry was outed last year by Mr Loughton’s hospital after he anonymously revealed in the Mail that 55 cancer patients were needlessly put through the agony of chemotherapy.

This evening, he said: ‘They have whitewashed everything. I told them about Dr Mattu, about Sandra, about my case, but they said this is about the future, not the past. They have rewritten history their way, whatever the facts are.’

Mr Loughton, an NHS chief executive for 28 years, was awarded a pay rise of about £35,000 last year.

He joined Royal Wolverhampton in 2014 after 14 years at Coventry’s Walsgrave Hospital.

Mr Loughton said: ‘We are pleased with the review’s conclusions. Our number one priority is always patient care. Having an open and transparent culture is one of the ways in which we can ensure we remain committed to providing the best care we possibly can.

‘We are always seeking ways in which we can improve and we will take on board the recommendations the review makes.’

A trust spokesman said NHS Improvement commissioned Deloitte to do the review and ‘in line with many other organisations we have used the services of Deloitte’.

NHS Improvement said: ‘Deloitte were appointed following a formal and thorough tendering and evaluation process.’
Deloitte declined to comment.”