Published: 13 December, 2012
by TOM FOOT

A PROBE into the collapse of Camden’s out-of-hours doctors co-operative has revealed how its £700,000 pension pot was used to “prop-up” the company before it went bust.

The New Journal revealed in July 2010 how Camidoc directors used staff contributions to balance its books over three years to plug a shortfall in NHS funding.

But the vast scale of the “loss” was not known until Monday when the Insolvency Service (IS) announced details of its two-year investigation.

Dr Mayur Gor, 54, Dr Ivor Robinson, 67, and Camidoc’s former chief executive, Michael Golding, 53, have agreed to an order banning them from acting as directors of a company for a combined 14½ years.

Mark Bruce, chief examiner at the Insolvency Service, said: “Failure to pay pension contributions into a pension scheme while deducting money from members is a very serious matter and the law rightly treats it as such.”

He said the IS investigation found that between April 2008 and March 2010 Camidoc Ltd withheld £699,720.65 from the NHS Pension Agency.

The fund has yet to be recouped and the Department of Work and Pensions, the NHS and the Department of Health are locked in a dispute over who is responsible for it.

Camidoc was formed as a not-for-profit company in 1995 by Camden and Islington doctors.

Despite being plagued by controversy over the death of the Guardian journalist Penny Campbell, who died after a series of doctors failed to diagnose she was suffering from septicaemia, it grew to span five north London boroughs and had more than 300 local doctors on its books and one million patients.

Camidoc went into voluntary liquidation in November 2010 with bosses blaming Camden’s primary care trust (PCT) for “ignoring” three separate requests for funds despite a “substantial increase in activity”.

The company’s sudden collapse came as a surprise, as just five months earlier it had been named as “preferred supplier” by Camden’s PCT following a competitive tender.

Steve Grant, who became finance director at Camidoc in 2010 after the period under investigation, told the New Journal on Tuesday: “It was never done in a Robert Maxwell fashion.

"It wasn’t a fraudulent approach, it was borne out of a necessity. The pension money was never mis-appropriated.

“It was sitting in the balance sheet and it was understood it hadn’t been paid. The PCT knew about it anyway. The PCT said, ‘Okay, we understand that’ – then they changed their mind when they saw the liabilities against the assets.”

After Camidoc was replaced by Harmoni Plc in August 2010, more than 200 doctors delivered a petition to the then Secretary of State Andrew Lansley arguing that the “illegal” use of their pension fund was “made in good faith” and calling for Camidoc should be reinstated.

Mr Grant, who went on to work for Harmoni, said: “Harmoni doesn’t pay doctors the pension in same way that Camidoc did.

“It meant the big overhead that Camidoc had was not something that Harmoni suffers. That meant they could bid for the contract and effectively take it over.”

Harmoni Plc was bought by Britain’s largest for-profit health company, Care UK, last month and will take over the running of the service.

An Insolvency Service spokeswoman said that the Camidoc pension fund had not been recouped but that it was expected to be once the various agencies had decided whose responsibility it was.

Mr Bruce said the collapse of Camidoc should act as a cautionary tale for Camden’s clinical commissioning groups which, under controversial government health reforms, is about to take control of the vast majority of NHS funding.

He added: “It is of paramount importance that those involved in managing the services act correctly in how they use public money.”