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Derby Inquest - A chilling foretaste

The inquest opened today (18th January 2005) into the death of 11 patients in a psychiatric hospital in Derby in the 1990's. It is suspected that starvation played. a part in their deaths.

Earlier, the Crown Prosecution Service had declined to take up the case. This decision was a chilling foretaste of what is to come if the Mental Capacity Bill becomes law. The Prime Minister
has declared (Hansard 15th December 2004) that nothing must interfere with the law introduced by the Bland judgment in 1993, which condemned a young patient with brain damage to death by dehydration. The new Bill must not be amended so as to rule out this way of causing death; that is the Government's policy.

The Government is also going to join in the Appeal against Mr. Justice Munby's judgment in Leslie Burke's case, which gave patients the right to receive food and fluid, even by means of a tube, when unable to communicate.

Anyone who has a stroke and needs some time for rehabilitation will risk death from starvation and dehydration if the Burke judgement is overturned and the Mental Capacity Bill goes through. Also at risk will be patients who have been sedated, and so cannot help themselves to food and drink.

Baroness Chapman, the new "people's peer", warned in her maiden speech in the House of Lords on 10th January: "The Bill ignores the fact that people havea basic right to life; that issue cannot and must not be ignored." The Bill as it. stands "does not keep people safe."

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Medical sleuthing leads to call for inquiry into 'mass euthanasia' at hospital

• Hospital 'starved 11 patients to death' - Daily Telegraph Wednesday 19 January 2005

House of Lords Hansard for 10 Jan 2005 (pt 23)
Baroness Chapman's maiden speech

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