Chapter 9: The local and national media
Further media coverage: 2003–08
The story was taken up again on 11 February 2003, when BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme in its File on 4 series which examined the allegation that the lives of elderly patients were being shortened by their treatment. This programme included an interview with Mr Viggers and is covered further in Chapter 10.
On 25 May, Lois Rogers published an article in The Sunday Times headed “Police probe into 62 deaths at hospital". The article stated:
“Police sources confirmed this weekend that officers were investigating 62 deaths over four years. Dozens of nursing and medical staff are being interviewed.
… Last week the Gosport families were invited to a meeting later this summer to update them on the progress of the inquiry. Many are angry that the police and health authorities have persistently failed to investigate their complaints fully.
Ann Reeves, whose mother Elsie Devine died in suspicious circumstances at Gosport at the same time as Richards, said the police had originally told her it was ‘not in the public interest’ to investigate.
Last week she said: ‘We do all hope this criminal investigation is now going somewhere and that we will get some answers. It has been a nightmare for the families.’” (OSM100950, p1)
On 11 June, the Southern Daily Echo carried a report headed “Inquiry demanded into hospital deaths":
“At a press conference staged by a legal firm which is representing 27 families, solicitor Ann Alexander confirmed they would be pressing for a full and thorough investigation.
She said: ‘We would not rule out calling for an inquiry from any agency but I understand the police are currently reinvestigating complaints and I will be meeting with them later this week.’
At the press conference held this morning it was also revealed that 30 more concerned relatives have complained to Hampshire police regarding the care their loved ones received while recuperating at the cottage hospital during the late 1990s.”
Around this time, Gosport War Memorial Hospital was beginning to be linked to other hospital investigations into the care of the elderly. A short article in The Guardian on 24 September linked it with cases in Withington Hospital, Manchester and North Lakeland Healthcare NHS Trust.
On 7 January 2004, the Portsmouth News reported a police statement. Under the headline “Sensitivity, reassurance and a proper explanation are needed over death”, its editorial read:
“Two differing sentiments stand out in the welter of comments today on disquiet surrounding the progress - or lack of it - of police investigations into the deaths of scores of elderly people at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.
The first is from the police officer in charge of the inquiry. ‘The families must be confident that there has been a thorough investigation,’ he says.
The other is a woman whose mother died at the hospital five years ago. ‘I have very little confidence in what is going on at present,’ she says.
Therein lies a gulf that must be bridged - and the driving force for that should logically be the police.
Of course, an inquiry into the deaths of more than 60 people will have to be laboriously painstaking. It cannot, it must not, be rushed.
As senior officers point out, it draws in experts who cannot shelve everything else at the drop of a hat to give immediate opinion on potential evidence presented by police investigators.
But a need for sensitivity is writ large here. Police are dealing with relatives who have lost loved ones and are desperately seeking answers. The fact is that, in this case, the inquiry is following an earlier unsuccessful probe, the efficiency of which is now subject to official investigation.
No-one has voiced to The News any fear that antagonism over that might have led to a strain in relations between police and families. But the time is ripe for senior officers to offer reassurance and an explanation acceptable to relatives who seek only the full truth about what happened to a loved one.” (HCO000827, p4)
In the course of 2004–06, national media coverage specific to the hospital was very limited.
More intensive media coverage occurred with the completion of the police investigation. On 20 December 2006, the Portsmouth News reported the decision that there would be no prosecutions, and followed this up with two articles the following day. On 21 December, the newspaper carried an interview with Assistant Chief Constable (Asst Ch Const) Watts under the headline “Top cop defends deaths inquiry”. The article reported Asst Ch Const Watts’ comment that he was not surprised there was to be no prosecution (MRE000495).
In a separate article, the Portsmouth News reported relief among Dr Barton’s GP colleagues. The article also contained these comments from an unnamed nurse:
“She told how staff had to put up with taunts from some visitors throughout the investigations, which first began in 1998. She told how hospital bosses had to call a crisis meeting to advise nurses and staff to ignore it.
… People would ask if you were one of the nurses who killed the patients. They said people came to our hospital to die.
People just assumed that there couldn’t be all that smoke if there was no fire. The morale was low - it is not nice as a nurse to hear that sort of thing. They had a meeting and we were just told to ignore it. But we all stuck together. We knew that we had not done anything wrong. I am sure there must be enormous relief in the hospital this week.” (MRE000496, pp1–2)
Other newspapers reported the decision. The Yorkshire Post said: “Yesterday, the CPS announced that negligence could not be proven to a criminal standard and that there was no realistic prospect of conviction of healthcare staff.”
At the same time, the story was overtaken in the national media by Department of Health Ministers announcing that the hospital was one of six to get extra funding (over £6 million) for improvements. This story made the national press, including The Guardian. The decision not to prosecute staff at the hospital did not.
On 14 May 2008, the inquests into the deaths of ten people who died at the hospital were formally opened and then adjourned. That day a report in the Portsmouth News named the ten (OSM100791).
Four days later, Lois Rogers followed up her earlier articles in The Sunday Times. Under the headline “Convalescent unit faces inquest into suspicious deaths”, she suggested that the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, had ordered the inquest:
“Straw has demanded the coroner’s investigation even though at least seven of the bodies were cremated. An inquest cannot take place in the absence of a corpse unless there are exceptional circumstances.
The justice ministry believes there is sufficient anxiety about the circumstances of the cases to require such a procedure, which, in the absence of remains, will be based only on a review of medical records and witness statements.
The allegation of ‘murder by euthanasia’ is similar to that levelled against Harold Shipman, the GP from Greater Manchester who was Britain’s biggest mass killer. He was convicted of 15 murders but is believed to have killed about 250 of his patients. Shipman committed suicide in prison in 2004.
… The inquest into the 10 selected Gosport deaths was opened last Wednesday at Portsmouth and South East Hampshire coroner’s court.
A full hearing is scheduled for this autumn. A different coroner, Andrew Bradley, from Basingstoke, will conduct the process, which is expected to be the largest inquest of its kind.” (MRE000484, p1)
The article in The Sunday Times quoted a spokesperson for Hampshire Primary Care Trust as saying that recommendations for improvements in the hospital’s practice had already been implemented. She pointed out that the police investigations had come to nothing, and that “the further scrutiny was ‘hugely distressing’ for staff” (MRE000484, p2).