Liverpool Care Pathway - Damage Limitation

The Francis Report highlighted the 'appalling suffering and routine neglect of hundreds of people' between 2005 and 2009.


The public inquiry described this as a 'disaster'. Stafford Hospital, where up to 1,200 patients had their lives taken, has been placed in administration. It was announced in February that the move was being considered to 'safeguard services'. The first criminal investigation has begun. This move is clearly to limit the criminal damages bill.

Politicians make it out to be so, but the NHS is not free. It is funded out of the pockets of hard-working people. Politicians, as politicians do, make out that the people's largesse is theirs to deal with and dole out as is their wont and to bask in the praise which comes their way for their goodly works.

There is a grave responsibility and duty of trust incumbent upon those who hold public funds. Although, unfortunately, this is no longer felt or borne with the same respect as, perhaps, in former times it was, the question must be put: why should those public funds be used to foot the criminal damages bill?

The plush salaries of the managers and officials who ran the Trust and the NHS; the government ministers of whatever and all political hues who ran the Department of Health and tried to cover up the misdeeds being done and deny them; all those who oversaw this and did nothing but look the other way and spread a fog of plausible denial - these should be the ones made to pay and made to live their lives in abject penury for this wicked betrayal of trust and responsibility.

Over a thousand dead and they don't bat an eyelid. This is baffling; this is mind-boggling. 

This is Mail Online -

Taking 'learnings' is not good enough.

BBC News Stoke & Staffordshire  reports on the lack of accountability:

The partner of a diabetic woman who died at Stafford Hospital has said he hopes an investigation will mean individuals are brought to account.

In February the inquiry's chairman Robert Francis published his report.

While being strongly critical of the trust, staff and senior management, he said he hoped it would not lead to individuals being made "scapegoats".'Called to account'

This is a point on which Mr Street strongly disagreed.

"I have a lot of respect for Mr Francis. But nobody as far as I'm aware has been called to account for their complacency in allowing what happened at Stafford Hospital.

"I'm not a vindictive man. I don't necessarily want to see people behind bars, but what I do want to see is those who are found to be guilty or complicit in causing this situation to be called to account."

He said a fine for the trust as a whole would only further damage the financially stretched organisation.

"Unless people are seen to be held to account for such long-running negligence, no message is going to be sent out across the NHS to other trusts who may be equally responsible," he added.

The £13m Francis inquiry heard hundreds of people may have died needlessly at Stafford 2005-2009 due to negligence.

Mail Online