Midwife from One Born Every Minute loses unfair dismissal case with the NHS after ‘witch hunt’ over TikTok recommendation posts

A midwife from One Born Every Minute has lost her unfair dismissal case with the NHS over TikTok advice posts exposing maternity shortcomings.

Lara Basini-Millar built up a huge following when she took to social media to voice her concerns at the way the NHS maternity services were being run.

She claimed she was speaking up about a ‘worrying’ culture emerging after working for 21 years as a senior midwife at Southmead Hospital in Bristol.

But after using her TikTok account to air these grievances, she was called in by hospital bosses for being ‘too sexual’ and told she was ‘impersonating’ being a midwife at the trust.

Ms Basini-Millar, 45, claimed a ‘clique’ of fellow midwives then created a WhatsApp group chat to criticise her videos and subjected her to a ‘witch hunt’.

The midwife launched legal action for unfair constructive dismissal by the North Bristol NHS Trust earlier this year, alleging she had been ‘bullied’, ‘harassed’ and ‘targeted’ and that colleagues ‘disapproved of her social media activity’ and her ‘gregarious personality’.

But Ms Basini-Millar has had her case dismissed after Employment Judge Corinna Ferguson found it did not breach its ‘mutual trust and confidence’ with her. 

The judge said she went on working casually for the trust for a month after her February 2023 resignation and this demonstrated that her ‘confidence and trust’ in her employer was not ‘in fact destroyed or seriously damaged prior to her resignation’.

She also found that Ms Basini-Millar was not able to name anyone she thought was bullying her, but accepted that she ‘felt genuinely and deeply aggrieved by the fact that people had been complaining about her’.

Her complaint of unfair dismissal failed because the trust did not breach its ‘mutual trust and confidence’ with the midwife.

The judge said: ‘[Ms Basini-Millar] has also asserted that all of the complaints arise from occasions when she had to call out bad practice and the staff were protecting themselves by getting their story in first.

‘Alternatively she suggests that some staff were jealous of her as a result of One Born Every Minute, or disapproved of her social media activity or her gregarious personality in general.

‘Even if there is some truth to those suggestions, which I am not in any position to determine, it does not alter the fact that [Ms Basini-Millar]’s managers were faced with numerous concerns and complaints against [Ms Basini-Millar] which, on their face, painted a consistent picture of [Ms Basini-Millar] upsetting junior staff by undermining them or not supporting them.

‘The managers obviously could not ignore this and [Ms Basini-Millar] does not say they should have done.’

Employment Judge Ferguson noted that Ms Basini-Millar was a ‘passionate midwife’ and she eventually chose to ‘commute to London to work in another trust’ because she felt she was being ‘unfairly criticised’ while working in Bristol.

The tribunal, held in Bristol, heard Ms Basini-Millar worked at Southmead as a midwife from 2009 having also worked there before she qualified as a midwife from 2003 to 2006.

Ms Basini-Millar featured ‘quite prominently, and positively’ in One Born Every Minute in about 2013 to 2014 when it was filmed at Southmead, the tribunal heard.

Her colleague Bonny Hetherington told line manager Nicola Chinnock in February 2021 that three midwives had complained to her about Ms Basini-Millar’s ‘conduct and behaviour at work’.

Ms Hetherington had said something needed to be done to address Ms Basini-Millar’s ‘inappropriate, unprofessional and unsafe behaviours’.

The incidents in question included one in which she argued with a midwife in front of a patient. It was also alleged she was ‘often on her phone’.

Ms Hetherington said the maternity unit felt ‘unsafe and chaotic’ with Ms Basini-Millar in charge and, the same month, another colleague complained to a senior figure that she ‘had been talking about her personal life loudly and was not engaged with the tasks in hand’.

Another midwife then complained that Ms Basini-Millar criticised her in front of a student, describing her behaviour as ‘unprofessional and verging on bullying’.

After an incident in November 2021, Ms Basini-Millar complained ‘she felt she did not fit in’.

She then made several complaints to her line manager in April 2022, including that ‘she received negative reaction [sic] from colleagues to her involvement in One Born Every Minute’.

A midwife coordinator then told Ms Chinnock that two staff members had difficulties with Ms Basini-Millar and had even ‘gone home upset and felt like leaving’.

Some less senior midwives would try to swap shifts if Ms Basini-Millar was on the rota to work at the same time.

Following a meeting with Ms Chinnock to discuss these issues, Ms Basini-Millar said in an email: ‘I have reflected majorly since we met and I understand that my personality is huge and I don’t acknowledge always that this can be intimidating but I truly am the most kind and honest person who is genuinely passionate about what we all do.

‘I have realised the women do gravitate towards me and I am working on how I can still prioritise the woman whilst enabling their midwife to feel Important to them.

‘Having discussed this aspect with the other band sevens, they also say, the title means that the women look to them, so this coupled with my one born thing, which turns out has been the bane of my life and then my exhuberance [sic], I’m realising probably can make some feel that I am taking over.’

In September 2022, she set up her TikTok account and a month later she applied for a sales role with a medical sales company, which she was then offered.

She accepted in November and asked for a sabbatical from her job at the NHS Trust, which was duly refused because she was accepting paid employment.

Ms Basini-Millar told the tribunal she resigned because she had been ‘bullied, harassed, targeted and treated differently to [her] peers’.