Andrew Lansley told the Financial Times he would write to the Commons public accounts committee and the Department of Health asking them to re-examine the circumstances around the resignation of Professor Denise Lievesley, former chief executive of the Information Centre, the National Health Service’s data factory.

Prof Lievesley, a former Royal Statistical Society president, claimed this week that she was made a “scapegoat” by the Department of Health after repeatedly raising the alarm about the joint venture’s worth and its handling of information. Dr Foster Intelligence, the joint venture, strongly rejects her criticisms.

Mr Lansley said it “might be appropriate” for the public accounts committee to respond to Prof Lievesley’s claims by making new inquiries about the joint venture, whose formation it attacked last year as a “backroom deal” set up at a cost of £12m to the taxpayer.

Mr Lansley said: “It seems to me to be clear that [Prof Lievesley] was, from her own professional point of view, highly sceptical, indeed internally critical, about what was being done. The evidence at the time [of the initial inquiry] doesn’t appear to have included some of the reservations she was expressing internally.”

Prof Lievesley’s claims, which emerged this week at a hearing at Leeds Employment Tribunal, have yet to be tested by cross-examination. Prof Lievesley did not attend the hearing, citing a previous commitment.

Mr Lansley said he also planned to ask the DoH why the Information Centre had agreed a deal under which Prof Lievesley received a pay-off in exchange for her silence about her departure.

Dr Foster Intelligence – which is half-owned by the Information Centre and half by Dr Foster LLP, a private health information company – has defended the quality of the information it provides. It said it and its partners, which include Imperial College, operated to the “highest standards of data quality”.

The Department of Health has declined to comment on Prof Lievesley’s case.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ca6578e-c3c0-11dc-b083-0000779fd2ac.html