The island’s former medical director has been awarded £3.1m by a tribunal following her unfair dismissal.

Dr Ranson was unfairly dismissed after making protected disclosures.

The tribunal, chaired by Douglas Stewart, also ruled that the DHSC must pay 70% of Dr Ranson’s costs of the liability proceedings, the full amount of which is still to be assessed.

The payout includes £1.95m in lost future earnings and almost £750,000 in pension losses. Injury to Dr Ranson’s feelings, aggravated damages and personal injury also added to the total figure.

Going back to when the tribunal ruled Dr Ranson had been unfairly dismissed, the panel said: ‘The unanimous decision of the Tribunal is that Dr Ranson, having made protected disclosures, was automatically unfairly dismissed and suffered detriments in consequence. She was also unfairly dismissed irrespective of the protected disclosures.’

The latest hearings have focused on the compensation Dr Ranson was to receive for her dismissal and the effect this has had on her health and employment prospects.

Dr Ranson had been appointed as the Medical Director of the DHSC commencing in January 2020 and agreed a contract for a fixed- term of two years at £200,000 per annum plus the benefit of a pension.

Bullying, Humiliation and Misleading Statements

The panel’s report says: ‘The case advanced by Dr Ranson (and as determined in the Liability Decision) was that, during 2020 and into 2021, following the humiliation, bullying, harassment and vilification that she endured from her employers, and from the CEO Miss Magson in particular, her health broke down.’

It continues: ‘Before then, from 8th December 2020, Dr Ranson had known that she would not be transferring to Manx Care on 1st April 2021 as had been mutually intended at the outset. What she did not know, until exposed by evidence available in the Liability Hearing, was that she was not being transferred because of false information given by Miss Magson to Mrs Teresa Cope and Mr Andrew Foster, the incoming CEO and Chairman of Manx Care.

‘Knowing it to be untrue, Miss Magson had asserted that Dr Ranson had not wished to be transferred to Manx Care. She also informed them that Dr Ranson was not up to the job of Medical Director and was being performance- managed. In any formal sense, this also was untrue.’

The tribunal said the it had ‘no problem in determining that consequent upon Miss Magson misleading Mrs Cope and Mr Foster in October and/or November 2020, Dr Ranson did not transfer to Manx Care’ and that while it was not inevitable that her employment would be continued after the end of her two-year fixed term, it ‘was satisfied that was the likely position, an opinion that remains unchanged’.

Health

The report goes into detail about Dr Ranson’s health, for the simple matter of decency we have no intention of repeating all of those details in full here.

As a matter of course, Dr Ranson was found, by different mental health experts, to be suffering from PTSD, as well as a moderate to severe depressive disorder with PTSD features, as well as clinical depression.

The tribunal said: ‘Both experts agreed that their diagnoses of clinical depression differ only to a degree and fall within a reasonable range of expert opinion.