Surely even a civil servant can be fired for gross negligence. I think their union would have a hard sell getting the public behind them striking over someone getting the sack who wasted a billion squids of the NHS budget!

Ha ha ha ha.

I can see you've never worked in the civil service. Promotion, possibly "sideways", is by far the more likely outcome for gross negligence. Sacking people for gross negligence is hard enough even in the private sector under uk law.

HR in the civil service is sh*t scared of the unions and strikes are an option of last resort. Virtually nothing gets that far.

Again as I've commented above it would require such a sea change both in law and process - all of which the unions would fight every last step of the way - that there are undoubtedly other lines of attack.

Be interesting to see. The person or people responsible almost certainly would be easy enough to turn the public on (6-figure salary, first-class travel, gold-plated pension etc, etc) and has wasted a billion quid/year at a time when the NHS is strapped for cash. Let the tabloids do the rest. It might encourage the others, at least.