Professor John Robertson OBA
Thanks to Mrs Robertson and Dottie, for both alerting me to this.
From BBC Nottinghamshire today:
A corporate manslaughter investigation has been opened into failings that led to hundreds of babies dying or being injured at maternity units in Nottingham.
Nottinghamshire Police said it was examining whether maternity care provided by the Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS trust had been grossly negligent.
The trust is at the centre of the largest maternity inquiry in the history of the NHS, with about 2,500 cases of neonatal deaths, stillbirths and harm to mothers and babies being examined by independent midwife Donna Ockenden.
There’s not a mention of any of the last three English health secretaries, Streeting, Atkins or Barclay, or of any UK Government representative in coverage by the BBC or the Guardian.
Why? Because the Health Trusts are responsible. They know it, opposition MPs know it and the media know it.
In Scotland things are different, very different it seems. A dead baby, even one, never mind thousands, not even a death, is an opportunity to blame the SNP in government rather than the actually responsible health boards, in a sickening and cynical war by proxy. See for example:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
colonial media.
shameless imperial agitprop.
scandalous
gavinochiltree
LikeLiked by 2 people
shameless Sarwar.
the English Unionist’s tea-boy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do we expect anything else from biased BBC Scotland,the link below is worth looking at for reference to baby deaths.
https://www.healthequitynorth.co.uk/app/uploads/Infant-mortality-report-EMBARGOED.pdf
LikeLike
I was in a Turkish resort recently where several shops proudly advertised “Best fakes in town”, You could stick that on the site of Pacific Quay and no one would bat an eyelid.
BBC Scotland is a news broadcaster in name only. It is a propaganda outfit, nothing more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you do a search online on “English NHS scandals” then some of the results that come up are this.
Category: “Medical scandals in the United Kingdom” (Wikipedia).
“Long wait for justice in one of Britain’s worse Health scandals” (politico-eu)
” Day of shame UK Inquiry finds cover up of NHS blood and blood products” (France 24).
We have seen various scandals in the English NHS but not once have we seen any responsibility being placed directly at the door of either the current UK government Health Secretary or any previous Health Secretary in any UK government.
In fact when there are any scandals or deaths in any English NHS Trust area then it is expected that they, that English NHS Trust , will take the blame (fully) and so then it is they who are seen as being totally responsible .
So they, the NHS Trust, are expected to take all responsibility for any deaths from what is determined to be a scandal in a English NHS hospital , as in one that they run as an NHS Trust, and so they also need to take all of the consequences too when these things are publicly exposed.
There have been various NHS England scandals that have resulted in baby deaths in hospitals in England where mothers have had to fight to try to get answers and to get justice via an inquiry.
In a 2022 media report , Shrewsbury maternity scandal was one that involved a NHS Trust where it was reported :
“Catastrophic failures at an NHS trust may have led to the deaths of more than 200 babies, nine mothers and left other infants with life-changing injuries”.
“Senior midwife Donna Ockenden examined maternity practices at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust (SaTH) over 20 years”.
“Her report found that babies’ deaths were often not investigated and grieving parents were not listened to”.
“One of the mothers whose daughter died in 2016 said “We’ve had to fight all the way for this” ( a Report being done).
A review revealed:
“201 babies could have survived had SaTH provided better care”.
“29 cases where babies suffered severe brain injuries and 65 incidents of cerebral palsy”.
Another mother, whose daughter died in 2009 said “the numbers themselves did not not tell the ‘whole story’ of the impact on families”.
Senior midwife Ms Ockenden said: “We now know that this is a Trust that failed to investigate, failed to learn and failed to improve.
“This resulted in tragedies and life-changing incidents for so many of our families.”
During the time of this scandal , that spanned over two decades between 2000 and 2019 , there were various UK governments who were also, as UK governments, responsible for NHS England.
In 2000 it was a Labour UK government led by Tony Blair.
In 2007 Gordon Brown was in charge as PM of a Labour UK government.
In 2010 David Cameron was PM in a Tory/Lib Dem coalition UK government.
The Tories were the still in charge up to the time that this report investigated this particular Maternity Hospital under Shrewsbury NHS Trust (who are the main provider of hospital services for Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and North Powys) , where , in 2016 Theresa May was the Tory PM and then Boris Johnson took over as Tory PM in July 2019 up to 2022.
In 2017 Jeremy Hunt , the then Tory Health Secretary under a Theresa May premiership , asked the Senior Midwife ,Ms Ockenden , to investigate Maternity care at this Trust.
The review that she did had examined 1,486 cases between 2000 to 2019 – making it the largest inquiry into a single service in the history of the NHS. Where it was found that a “string of repeated failures” spanned over 20 years.
In 2022 the media reported that this was one of the worse maternity scandals in the NHS that happened over two decades. At the time of some of those baby’s deaths some of the bereaved mothers were blamed.
Tragic deaths with mothers and fathers grieving and no one was listening to them or believing them, and they , desperate for answers, were being ignored, indeed in certain cases SaTH concluded investigations into certain babies deaths were not required, insisting that their practices were safe.
Some parents then compiled their own dossier of 23 babies’ deaths they were certain should not have happened.
When they presented the evidence to Jeremy Hunt in 2017, their second meeting with the then-Health Secretary, he then ordered an inquiry.
One of the mother’s noted that via previous other scandals involving the NHS in other areas in England , where she said:
“We’ve had reports before and learning has not been embedded and changes have not happened.” also she noted that “What I really fail to understand is why it has taken the persistence of families, supported by the media, to bring this to light, for the learning to happen and gifted to the (English) NHS – why didn’t anyone else want this”?
“Why didn’t the clinicians on the front line want this? Why didn’t the regulators, the clinical commissioning group and the Care Quality Commission want this – why didn’t they care enough to look closely at what was going on? The evidence was really there, it’s so clear – why did nobody want to learn and change?”
She did not mention why any previous UK government also did not want a report to be done on this particular scandal , as she , and other parents, all knew that ultimately the buck as in the failures stopped with the respective hospitals and that is the distinction and huge difference in what happens here in Scotland , with NHS deaths , assumed NHS failures etc etc that all end up as being the blamed upon and so seen as the fault of the Scottish Health Secretary, the Scottish government and also the Scottish FM.
(Where all we hear from opposition parties and also from much of the media is that the Scottish Health Secretary should either resign or be sacked, as in when anything comes to light as being seen as a failure -so then promoted as a scandal- within any hospital in the Scottish NHS the automatic reaction is to then politicise it).
If they, as a Scottish government , Scottish Health Secretary and Scottish FM are promoted as being to blame for any and all NHS tragedies or assumed NHS failures in Scotland then surely that, as a situation, should then be the exact same in England ?
NHS Trusts were introduced by the Tories in 1991 and extended by Labour from 2004 to offer greater autonomy and local accountability.
Finally in searching online for ‘English NHS Scandals” this came up via a site for ‘Global Investigative Journalism Network’:
“How BBC Newsnight Exposed British Healthcare Scandals”
“British” ?
No , as all of the stories referred to in this article are in reference to English NHS scandals, in fact in the second paragraph of this article they even state that their, BBC Newsnight’s, brief was a:
“Brief to investigate failures of care inside England’s taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS), as well as the impact on patients, their families, and NHS professionals on the frontline”. (where all of the scandals noted in the article were all English in origin ).
So really yet again when it is a situation, incident , scandal etc that has occurred within England it then becomes that which is presented as being seen as #bad, or as a #failure or a #scandal of the UK or as being British in origin.
That is never applied to anything originating from Scotland , as in stemming from within Scotland, as then it is promoted as, and so confined to being regarded and so promoted as a very #Bad , #Failure or a #Scandal that is then very much #ScottishOnly (where the finger is then always only pointed at the SNP as a party and as the Scottish government).
Anas Sarwar specialises in exploiting the tragedy of relatives who have either lost a loved one in what is then presented as a Scottish NHS failure/scandal or they , as relatives, have a close relative who they want to see justice for, when they seek answers for what they say has been either inadequate care or a failure in care within a specific hospital.
However Anas Sarwar promotes it as being what he says is just yet another (supposed) example of a systematic failure within the Scottish NHS ( where the final buck does not stop at the respective Scottish Health board or respective Scottish Hospital’s door, but instead Sarwar ensures that the buck is always placed at the door of the SNP alone as the Scottish government ).
That is UK politics and the UK media .
Where we see different standards and rules applied here in Scotland compared to England .
Where, when there are any NHS incidents that occur in Scotland they then quickly become ‘controversial’ and also promoted as widespread system failures , and sometimes even become ‘scandals” which are then always politicised here in Scotland.
However it seems that elsewhere, those same things are treated as the failures of and the scandals linked only to specific NHS Trusts (Hospitals) in England and not ever politicised against whichever government is in charge in the UK , who as a UK government are then also in charge of the NHS in England.
Where else but in Scotland does everything within every Scottish public service , even those things that local councils control as part of their responsibilities, then all become #SNPBAD ( only to perhaps one day change when a UK party, God forbid, then becomes the Scottish government and then and only then will all the #Bad, #Failures and too the #Scandals be directed at the source and not at the (pro UK) party who are the new Scottish government).
Let’s not forget though that funding for the English NHS (which then impacts the various devolved governments NHS funding too) has been greatly reduced as funding by previous Tory UK governments, also seen in the English NHS is more involvement of privatisation, which Labour intends to continue as a NHS policy.
(I mean I guess that there has to be some (financial) return for the political donations made to Labour politicians, including to the current Labour Health Secretary, for a Private healthcare Company who donated to Labour , prior to the 2024 General election. Where even more privatisation will happen within the English NHS)
That is why I vote SNP now, have also done in the past, will also do that in the future as well.
Simples…..is it not.
Liz S
LikeLiked by 1 person