Blog
Enhancing Public Accountability: Key Elements of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill 2025
Kirsty Cook
22 August 2023
James Bell speaks to LBC radio about the emerging NHS failings surrounding the Lucy Letby case
Kingsley Napley’s James Bell has been interviewed by Shelagh Fogarty on LBC radio to give his views, as head of clinical negligence, on shocking evidence that the NHS failed to respond sufficiently to concerns raised by staff - including consultants - regarding neonatal nurse Lucy Letby. Letby has been convicted of the murder of seven newborn babies and the attempted murders of six more. A number of surviving victims have been left with life changing disabilities, including cerebral palsy.
23 January 2020
What has happened at East Kent NHS Foundation Trust? Stillbirths and making each baby count
The Trust (which the Care Quality Commission rates as “Requiring Improvement”) manages five different hospitals. The BBC article startlingly sets out that from as long ago as 2015 the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists were reviewing maternity care, amid "concerns over the working culture".
3 December 2019
Unequal healthcare for patients with learning disabilities
BBC News recently featured a video highlighting one family’s struggle to ensure that the avoidable death of their loved one, Paul Ridd, never happens again. Paul Ridd’s death in 2009 at Swansea’s Morriston Hospital was found by an inquest to have been contributed to by the hospital’s neglect.
20 November 2019
Genetic testing and pregnancy
The Times yesterday reported on a clinical negligence claim, currently being heard in the High Court, in which a central issue relates to whether or not there is an obligation to tell a pregnant patient that a relative has been diagnosed with a genetic disorder.
20 November 2019
Another sad story of toxic culture – A failure to learn from avoidable medical mistakes
It is unsurprising that there is a call for the Crown Prosecution Service to bring corporate manslaughter charges against Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust following an apparently damning report which looks at the culture of the Trust which has led to maternal deaths, stillbirths, babies left brain damaged because the staff failed to realise labour was going wrong or that Group B streptococcus or meningitis was present which required treatment by antibiotics.