Access Legal from Shoosmiths believes time and money spent on 'gagging orders' should go instead towards patient care and accident prevention.

Richard Follis, partner and national head of clinical negligence, said: "It would appear that a lot of effort and £millions is going on preventing doctors from saying anything negative about standards should they leave a particular hospital or the NHS altogether.

"Surely the NHS has this the wrong way round? That time and money should be spent on caring for patients and bringing standards up to acceptable levels.

"Departing doctors wouldn't then have anything to be negative about."

Follis was speaking following an investigation by Channel 4 News and The Independent revealed that there are confidentiality clauses in almost 90% of severance agreements between NHS trusts and leaving doctors.

"It's the same when it comes to defending clinical negligence cases: rather than being open and transparent and saying sorry. Too often the NHS appears to prefer closing ranks, spending thousands of pounds defending itself in the courts, and doing all it can to avoid admitting its own errors."

"I was approached in a notorious and high profile case by a whistleblower who had been a senior doctor in an NHS management role. What he told me made it clear that a number of health service managers had been aware of a problem with patient care for a very long time.

"However, they seemed unable to tackle it, and meanwhile more patients were being injured. The fact that our informant was still worried about his own position even though he had retired speaks volumes."

And Follis agrees with a former NHS trust chairman quoted in The Independent, who said trusts should never be in the situation where they're trying to reach compromise agreements with doctors who they fear will blow the whistle on issues such as poor standards.

"He's absolutely right," said Follis. "Trusts should have listened to these doctors' concerns in the first place and acted to put things right, not focus instead on what the doctor might say publicly.

"It's simply not in the public interest, whichever way you look at it.

"The bottom line is this: the NHS should be spending time, effort and money preventing problems arising, not on containment and fire-fighting once it's too late; and certainly not on trying to prevent doctors from speaking out."

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