Gosport hospital scandal: Review an 'emotional milestone' but far from end of fight for justice, say families

Families whose loved ones died at Gosport War Memorial Hospital after receiving excessive and “medically unjustified” doses of opiates said Wednesday was a milestone, but far from the end of their fight for justice.

After a 20-year struggle to have their concerns listened to and investigated, the findings of the four-year public inquiry went beyond the worst fears of many.

It found evidence of 456 deaths where unnecessary opiates cut lives short, and said there were probably 200 more where records were no longer available.

“Our vulnerable relatives ... were stripped of their final words to their loved ones,” said Bridget Reeves, whose 88-year-old grandmother Elsie Devine went into the hospital in October 1999 and died one month later, in a message from all the families.

While the inquiry lays out what led to this catastrophe, all the families say they want to see the hospital staff responsible, and the institutions which failed to act, held to account.

The Gosport inquiry chair, former bishop of Liverpool James Jones, said today that Dr Jane Barton, a GP and clinical assistant at the hospital from 1998 to 2000, “was responsible for the practice of prescribing” on the hospital’s wards.

But he added that nurses, who administered doses, and the senior consultants and managers, who records show knew what was being prescribed, were also actors in the “institutionalised practice of shortening lives”.

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Ms Reeves added: “We are all entitled to have an explanation when an alleged injustice has occurred, but this has been sinister, calculated and those implicated must now face the full rigour of the criminal justice system.”

This was the day that Gillian McKenzie, 84, had been waiting two decades for.

She was the first patient to go to the police shortly after the death of her mother Gladys Richards, 91, in August 1998. She also brought the families’ evidence to Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP and former health minister, who secured the public inquiry in 2014.

“It was very emotional, because I kept a stiff upper lip for 20 years. It’s nice to know I wasn’t barmy,” Ms McKenzie said.

“I wouldn’t say today is a victory, it’s not in the criminal court yet. While I’m alive I shall be fighting for that.”

Eighteen months ago she had a breast cancer operation, and says she has been refused chemotherapy because of her age.

“I did say to the surgeon you’ve got to keep me alive until the report comes out, so I guess I’ve got to thank him for that.”

Now that the full report is with the police and Crown Prosecution Service, she wants to see 15 of the strongest cases taken to trial.

“Another milestone in a long journey, one we’re so sorry to be involved in,” was how Charles Farthing described the day. His stepfather, Arthur “Brian” Cunningham, was 79 when he was admitted to the hospital with a bed sore, and died shortly after.

While he said it feels “a little bit late” for prosecutions, he too was adamant that all those responsible should go before the legal system.

“I don’t want to condemn the NHS, it’s one thing we definitely don’t want to do. It’s the one or two individuals in it who have to be found and taken to task.

“The nurses need to be taken to task, as well as Dr Barton. She was utterly reckless in her prescribing but the nurses must have known they were doing wrong, and they were given a free license to do what they wanted.”

Mr Lamb and the bishop were also praised by families for their help in finally publishing the records, complaints and other pieces of evidence that showed the extent of the failings at Gosport.

“When I came today I thought there might be some stuff thrown under the carpet. It’s all come out, how the bishop has done so well leaves me speechless,” Eric Cousins told The Independent.

His father Arthur Cousins was a soldier who fought in the Normandy landings on Utah beach and was “missing in action, presumed dead” only to turn up two years later, alive, in a French hospital.

He died after being taken to Gosport War Memorial Hospital after a series of falls, one of which led to a broken breast bone, but was recovering well on the wards.

“We always feel guilty,” Mr Cousins told The Independent. “We saw him on the Sunday, he was sat in the chair right as rain talking about coming home to his greenhouse in a week’s time.”

“You ask your parents how they are and he did say to us, ‘I’m alright but what they’re giving me is doing my head in,’ he couldn’t think.”

“But you sit there and think, ‘Dad you’re getting the right treatment, you’re in the right place.’ You don’t argue.

“I went down a couple of days later, and this nurse called me into the office, and said: ‘We’ve got bad news, we think you father won’t see the week out.’”

His father died on 25 August 2000, after receiving 40mg of diamorphine – the medical name for morphine – double the maximum recommended dose.

Not all of the patients at the inquiry’s report on Wednesday died in Gosport. Karen Ripley, said her stepfather, Jim, was the only one to walk out of Gosport. Her mother Paule Ripley, now deceased, had joined forces with Ms McKenzie to call for answers.

“Luckily Jim Ripley survived because we puffed his pillow up at the right time and saw the syringe driver,” Ms Ripley said.

“We got him out and the pair of them started conversing, but as I say he was the only one who walked out of there. We had another five years after coming out, thank Christ.”

While she said Ms McKenzie’s efforts had led to the inquiry and today’s findings, for which Jeremy Hunt has apologised, the pressures which allowed the deaths in Gosport to arise were still evident today.

“Now the QA [Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth] is super stretched and they’re making mistakes. It’s frightening, you just can’t get ill anymore,” she said.

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Ms McKenzie said she hopes to speak to Mr Hunt soon after he said he would be meeting families, and will ask him why it has taken him so long to do so.

When asked what she would be doing this evening, she told The Independent: “I’m going back to comb through the report, to see which bits have been missed out and bring them to the attention of Mr Lamb.

“When your days are numbered, you make the most of every day.”