The Isle of Man’s former chief medical officer has said her career and reputation were “destroyed”, after she was awarded a record £3.2m settlement over her unfair dismissal for whistleblowing.
The island’s chief minister offered his “deepest apologies” to Dr Rosalind Ranson on Tuesday after a tribunal found that she had been forced out of her job and subjected to “humiliation, bullying, harassment and vilification” for whistleblowing over the Manx approach to Covid-19.
After being awarded £3,198,754 plus 70% of her legal costs, Ranson said she had lost her “belief in essential human kindness” as a result of her ordeal.
It is the single largest win for a whistleblowing case for the British Medical Association, which appointed lawyers to fight Ranson’s case.
The damages awarded were so high because the tribunal found that in defending themselves, some officials from the island’s department of health and social care (DHSC) gave such false accounts that they amounted to “a travesty of the truth”.
The DHSC’s former chief executive, Kathryn Magson, was singled out for “inexcusable” behaviour in misleading the tribunal. The DHSC was criticised for fighting the case on liability on a false basis, “to the substantial detriment of Dr Ranson and at the expense of taxpayers on the Isle of Man”.
Magson set out to “silence” Ranson by spreading false rumours she was “burnt out” in order to stop her appearing at a televised press conference, the tribunal found. She also falsely accused Ranson of “seeking the limelight” and being “hungry for power”, the panel concluded.
Ranson, a former GP from England, raised concerns about the Isle of Man’s approach to Covid in the early days of pandemic, shortly after being appointed as chief medical officer. She argued for an early lockdown, ahead of the UK and before a single case reached the island, to avoid a situation “where we are choosing who should be ventilated” in the island’s only hospital with intensive care beds, the Manx employment and equality tribunal heard.
She was dismissed in January last year after she raised a number of serious concerns, including questioning whether Magson – who was not medically qualified and was living in England for most of the pandemic – was passing on her advice to ministers.
In a statement, Ranson said: “My health has suffered, my reputation destroyed, my career shattered. I have lost my belief in essential human kindness because I have seen that the default position for many people was to protect their own personal interests, regardless of the consequences.
“When this behaviour extends to those who hold the most powerful of positions and in whom the public place their trust, then consequences must flow, action is needed, and the outcome of my tribunal hearing must not be the end.”
In a statement to the House of Keys, the Manx parliament, on Tuesday, the chief minister, Alfred Cannan, offered “not only my deep regret that Dr Ranson was subjected to such unprofessional and damaging behaviours whilst in post as the medical director, but … my deepest apologies for the harm she has experienced.”
He said he would commission an independent barrister to assess the DHSC’s management of the tribunal process.
