THE former head of equality in the NHS allegedly paid her husband £20,000 out of her official budget to produce newsletters from his garden shed a court has heard.

Paula Vasco-Knight was the chief executive of a hospital trust in Devon but had a second job working one day a week as head of equality and diversity.

Exeter Crown Court was told she got the NHS to buy her an expensive Macbook Pro laptop to produce newsletters but then contracted the job to her graphic designer husband Stephen without declaring an interest.

She allegedly arranged for £9,000 of her £200,000 equality and diversity budget to be paid in advance to her husband’s one-man company called Thinking Caps for the first three newsletters.

A further £11,072 was allegedly paid in advance for work on a second publication named Transform which did not materialise.

Her behaviour was ‘dishonest in the extreme’ and ‘a massive breach of trust and abuse of her position’ the jury were told.

Vasco-Knight should have declared an interest before giving any work to her husband and the details should have been recorded in the annual accounts and audit.

Her assistant in running the equality programme should have questioned the payments to Vasco-Knight’s husband but allegedly allowed them to go through.

Vasco-Knight, aged 52, of The Seasons, Runcorn, denies two counts of fraud. Her husband Stephen, aged 45, of the same address, denies one count of fraud.

Habib Naqvi, aged 28, of Wells Road, Bristol, denies two counts of encouraging the commison of the offences.

Mr Gareth Evans, prosecuting, said the offences dated back to 2013-4 when former nurse Vasco-Knight was the chief executive of the South Devon NHS Foundation Trust and national lead for the NHS on equality and diversity.

He said the offences arose from her one-day a week equalities job, in which she had control over a £200,000 annual budget. Naqvi was a senior manager for equalities who was junior to her and saw her as a mentor.

Mr Evans said her husband Stephen was a graphic designer.

He said: ‘He runs a business called Thinking Caps of which he is the only employee. When interviewed he said it was a one-man show run from his garden shed.

‘We are inviting the jury to draw the inference that Mrs Vasco-Knight’s purchase of the high-quality Macbook Pro and a QuarkXPress graphic design package was to enable her husband to carry out his work with a high-tech machine and software.

‘We say Mrs Vasco-Knight, with the assistance of Naqvi, avoided making any declaration of interest when her husband was contracted to produce the newsletter for the equalities team.

‘Mr Vasco-Knight did produce a newsletter and was paid for it. It was highly professional and impressive. We say she abused her position to authorise the payment of £9,000 to her husband and did so without any declaration of interest.

‘She should have made that declaration formally and in writing and it should have appeared in the trust’s end of year accounts and audit.

‘We say Naqvi assisted her in making the payment, knowing that doing so without a declaration of interest was a criminal offence.’

Mr Evans said Vasco-Knight was given a £10,000 bursary from the NHS Leadership Academy and diverted it to her husband, supposedly for the production of a document called Transform.

Thinking Caps submitted an invoice to her which she passed on immediately to Naqvi, telling him to hold back three other invoices so it could be submitted at the same time.

Mr Evans said the Transform document was paid for but not produced at the time but was later cut and pasted together from material from the Kings Fund which had only been published a year later.

He said: ‘This is a very simple case. Vasco-Knight breached the standing financial instructions massively by causing her husband to be paid in excess of £20,000 with no declaration of interest made.

‘She must have known that she of all people as chief executive officer must obey the financial instructions.

‘She has attempted to distance herself by blaming Naqvi for commissioning the newsletter when it is clear from the e-mails that she told him who was going to produce the newsletter.

‘The Transform document is a complete sham. No proper document was ever produced yet Vasco-Knight and her husband were paid £11,072 for work which was never done.

‘That is fraud and it is dishonest in the extreme. On her part it was a massive breach of trust and abuse of her position as chief executive.’

When interviewed Vasco-Knight said the newsletter had been organised by Naqvi without her knowledge. She said she used her husband for the Transform work because his quote was between three and five times lower than others.

He denied any dishonesty and insisted the Transform document had been produced and delivered in late 2013.

Naqvi said he had no memory of authorising the first payment and was following instructions when arranging the second.