Chapter 11: The Panel’s work

The Panel complied with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 by registering with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller. In order to meet and maintain the standards required, the Panel designed and implemented a set of processes and protocols to manage the documentation provided by stakeholders including families.

Material was received in a wide range of formats: paper documents, letters and reports, newspaper articles, emails, electronic documents, paper records, microfiche and audio cassettes. The variety of formats of material received is a reflection of the rate of change in technology during the period of time being reviewed by the Panel. To facilitate management and analysis, all paper documentation was catalogued and scanned onto a document management system known as Relativity, provided by DTI Global, now Epiq. Information already in electronic format was loaded onto the same system. This enabled the research process to be carried out electronically in a secure state and for documents to be accessed simultaneously by multiple members of the research team.

A note on references. The referencing system used to link documents mentioned in the text to their source material indicates the initial source from which the Panel obtained the source material (for example, HCO for Hampshire Constabulary or CPS for the Crown Prosecution Service). In many cases, this only reflects the repository for the documents, and should not be taken as an indication that the organisation knew of the document or its contents from the date of origin. This applies particularly to documents referenced with a DOH prefix: the Department of Health was the legacy organisation to which documents passed after a range of NHS bodies were reorganised or abolished, including Health Authorities, Strategic Health Authorities, Regional Offices and Primary Care Trusts.

The Panel’s Terms of Reference included a commitment that it would oversee maximum possible disclosure of relevant information. This was the core guiding principle in the approach to any redaction of the material to be made available.

The Redaction Framework was intended to ensure, as far as possible, a consistent and thorough approach. Organisations that provided large volumes of material to the Panel were given access to the document management system so that they could apply their own redactions in line with the agreed framework. The Redaction Framework stated that redactions could only be applied for the following reasons:

• personal or personally sensitive data
  
• legal professional privilege
  
• information provided in confidence.

Contributing organisations and individuals suggested the redactions that they felt were justified within the framework. Where, on review, the Panel felt that the redactions could not be justified, stakeholders were asked to reconsider. While the Panel had no status in law to enforce disclosure and therefore had, in some exceptional cases, to accept redaction where it did not feel it was warranted, the position of the Panel was made clear to the stakeholders concerned. Further comment is made about this issue later in this chapter.

As the work of the Panel came to a conclusion, organisations and individuals were asked to carry out one final search, and to certify that this had been done and that all material that might be relevant to the work of the Panel in the context of its Terms of Reference had been made available. Copies of these certificates are available on the Panel website. Some organisations and individuals did not respond to this requirement. They are listed below:

• BBC
  
• Kiran Bhogal
• Care Quality Commission
  
• Chichester Crematorium
  
• DAC Beachcroft
  
• Hampshire County Council
  
• Tony Horne
  
• The Independent
  
• ITV
  
• Legal Aid Agency
  
• Ministry of Defence
  
• Patrick Sadd
  
• Portchester Crematorium
  
• Royal College of Nursing
  
• Thames Valley Primary Care Agency

As noted above, a key guiding principle of the Panel was ‘families first’. It was fundamental to the Panel that the process of public disclosure was managed so that disclosure was made initially to the affected families. The Panel decided that it should disclose its Report fully to the families on the day of publication but in advance of the Report becoming available to any other person or to the media or to the general public. As a result, the Panel was committed to a policy of ‘no piecemeal disclosure’.