Gosport hospital scandal: Families of victims furious at lack of immediate charges after 21-year fight for justice

Families whose loved ones were killed in Gosport War Memorial Hospital have expressed their fury at the prospect of enduring a further wait that could last years to learn whether criminal charges are to be brought.

A fourth, full police investigation into the hundreds of deaths linked to alleged poisoning with opiate painkillers was announced on Tuesday, and relatives who gathered for the forum in Fareham questioned why arrests had still not been made 21 years later.

Asked about the emotions among families, Charles Farthing, whose step-father Brian ‘Arthur’ Cunningham died after going into Gosport with a bedsore, said: “Anger, quite frankly”.

“The next phase is to interview families, to get individual statements,” Mr Farthing told The Independent. “That’s going to take nine months, then there will be a decision whether there’s enough evidence to go through to the next phase.”

“How long is that going to take? We don’t know.”

“We just can’t believe we will have to wait another nine months to learn whether there will be another arrest,” said Bridget Devine-Reeves, whose grandmother, Elsie Devine, died at the hospital.

“It is catastrophic, it is something I would never wish on my worst enemy – but we fight on.

“They didn’t go there to die, but they were hooked up to syringe drivers and within hours they were killed.

“So we can’t see why more time needs to be taken when the facts are clearly there and have been laid out time and time again.”

Ms Devine-Reeves added that the names of staff involved had been established in previous reviews, but some had since died without ever facing investigation.

“But it’s become bigger,” she added. “Because they committed a crime and that was covered up by the very people who should have been there to protect my grandmother, and all those other relatives.”

Last June, the Gosport Independent Inquiry determined that excessive doses of diamorphine (heroin) and other painkillers shortened the lives of 456 people, with there likely to be 200 more deaths which could not be established because medical records had been routinely destroyed.

The report found that Dr Jane Barton, a GP and clinical assistant on the wards ,had been chiefly responsible for the “culture” of prescribing.

However nurses, consultants and senior staff at the hospital would have been aware that the doses administered were dangerous and in many cases unjustified for patients who were not in end of life care.