Surgeon wins damages at race tribunal

A hospital consultant has won damages and a pay rise from an NHS trust after a case that an employment tribunal said was in "the worst category of racial discrimination".

Dr Mohamed Nasr, the head of genito-urinary medicine at Salisbury Health Care NHS Trust, was awarded £18,000 exemplary damages, and a £2,645 pay rise backdated to April 1999. Dr Nasr, head of GU medicine at the trust for 18 years, was repeatedly passed over for discretionary pay rises while others were awarded them. At a hearing in September last year, the trust was found guilty of racial discrimination. Despite this, it made no apology and refused to accept blame.

In August this year, a remedies hearing of the tribunal ordered the trust to pay damages and back pay to Dr Nasr. The tribunal said that "not a word of sympathy or contrition" was offered to Dr Nasr after the finding of racial discrimination and that he had been "humiliated in a very public way". It ruled that the trust had failed to demonstrate a "reasonable and plausible" explanation for its failure to award Dr Nasr a discretionary pay rise.