New Petitions

I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to come to today's meeting. We are calling for an independent body to be set up in Scotland to investigate claims of medical negligence. We believe that we have put before the committee evidence that shows that we, as victims of medical negligence, are not having our claims investigated properly.The present system allows the medical profession to police itself. After carrying out independent investigations into claims, we have reached a different opinion to that of doctors and are, in fact, able to show that this is a working-class issue. For example, we know that we will not get treated at the weekend in the neurosurgical unit or the accident and emergency unit in the finest hospital in Scotland. That is shocking.

Until we get a positive opinion from a neurosurgeon to the effect that Mrs Kelly could have survived, we can make no claim against the national health service. For claims such as the one involving Mrs Kelly, who was discharged from hospital with a subarachnoid haemorrhage, we are required to have the opinion of a neurosurgeon on whether the patient was treated properly. For a neurosurgeon to give such an opinion, he needs a computed tomography scan, a lumbar puncture examination and an angiogram. He also needs to know the patient's condition at the time. If, as in this case, there is no CT scan, lumbar puncture examination or angiogram and the neurosurgeon does not know the patient's condition, he assumes that the patient was well.The issue seems to be not how quickly patients can be treated, but for how long their treatment can be delayed until they have a fatal bleed. We can show that we, the taxpayers, are paying for basic treatment to which we cannot get access because of doctors' mistakes.Last Monday, we took our protest to the Southern general hospital, which has a first-class neurosurgical unit. As doctors had refused to answer our specific questions, we decided to take the issue to the door of the chief executive. He told us that, if we wrote to him with our concerns, he would answer them. However, he has not answered them.I put to the chief executive the opinion of the neurosurgeon who stated that even if the patient had been admitted to hospital on Sunday and received an angiogram that revealed a treatable aneurysm, the treatment would not have started until Monday. However, before I was able to finish my statement, the chief executive said—in front of witnesses—that the aneurysm would have been clipped. We are getting two different opinions.Also, when we have made inquiries to the neurosurgical unit, the unit has claimed to be a 24-hour service that is resourced to treat patients in emergencies. However, the neurosurgeon's opinion is that that is not the case. As victims of medical negligence, we simply want to know the truth. All that we ask is that we be told the truth and that someone be held accountable.

When the NHS is accused of negligence, the claim is listened to by a doctor. However, doctors cannot make unbiased decisions: they have a fatal conflict of interests. That is what Dame Janet Smith said in the Harold Shipman inquiry. She said that the culture in the General Medical Council was to protect doctors rather than the needs of patients.We are not the only family—Helen Kelly was my sister—to suffer such a loss. Since starting the campaign, other families have contacted us and sent information. One issue that has been highlighted is fabrication of evidence. To suffer such a death in the family is bad enough, but it only adds insult when doctors investigate themselves and cover up issues. We are being denied justice.If Helen's death was due to a lack of resources in the NHS, as working-class people we could accept that not enough money is going into it. However, her death seems to have been due to negligence and mistakes by doctors, which have then been covered up.As I said, ours is not an isolated case. Because of the website and because of our protests, people are now sending us documentation. My sister was the third person to be discharged from Crosshouse hospital with a subarachnoid haemorrhage. How many people need to die before the hospital admits that it is accountable?

When we put it to the hospital that Mrs Kelly was the third person to have died in that way, the people at the hospital asked, "Was it the same doctor?" Does it need to be the same doctor? There is a CT scan facility In Crosshouse hospital, but it seems that it cannot be accessed at weekends. The doctors claim that it can, however.

The hospital does not confront those issues. It fabricates times and so on. My sister's blood pressure was not taken at the hospital—I know that because she was accompanied the whole time—but the doctor says that it was and no one will go against the doctor. He said that he remembers the time at which my sister was discharged, because he distinctly remembers handing her the letter. However, my sister was never handed a letter; it was posted to her doctor. When the evidence was produced, however, we were faced with a closed shop—the hospital refused to discuss the situation any further.Doctors should not investigate themselves. There needs to be an independent body to investigate claims such as ours. If such a body were to say that nothing could have been done, that would be fine. However, it is a different matter when you are left feeling that an injustice has been done and a huge cover-up is going on.Dame Janet Smith, the head of the inquiry into the Shipman case, said:"The culture of unwillingness to report doctors is still there. It must go. There can be no room today for protection of colleagues when the safety and welfare of patients are at stake."She headed a Government inquiry. Why is the Government doing nothing about the situation that she talked about?

When you are a victim of medical negligence, the matter goes to the procurator fiscal's office, which sends the details to a doctor. The doctor says, "No, I would have done the same thing," so there is no inquiry. You then go to a solicitor and give him the details. However, he does not investigate the case; he must send the case notes to a doctor, who must respond with a positive report before an investigation starts.We demonstrated that Mrs Kelly should not have been discharged. Now, however, we have to prove that she would have survived had she received the appropriate level of care. The doctor must decide what to do with a patient but, if he has no information on that patient, how can he make a clinical judgment? That is the question that we are asking the hospital. We are talking about a doctor in the neurosurgical unit who assumes that all patients are well until they are investigated. We have doctors claiming that no treatment or investigation could have been carried out until Monday. However, if members look at medical literature, they will see that treatment of a person who has been diagnosed with a subarachnoid haemorrhage must start immediately. However, we have a doctor saying that, if the angiogram had been performed on Sunday and had showed an aneurysm that was treatable, treatment would not have started until Monday. Why did the doctor violate human rights? Withholding or withdrawing treatment is a breach of article 2 of the European convention on human rights. When we took our case to the human rights people, we got a letter back that shocked us. It said that they did not think that they could take our case forward because the doctor did not intentionally kill my wife. That is shocking. We did not say that the doctor did it intentionally. We should all get treatment, regardless of how much we have in our pockets.This is a working-class issue. The benefit of using medical literature as a basis for decisions that are made in hospitals, which we would like to happen, is that medical literature does not judge a patient or a doctor; it says how the patient should be treated, what treatment is available and what the treatment can do. It says that people such as Helen Kelly can survive but that, without any treatment, their situation is like a time bomb waiting to go off.We are told that discharging Helen made no difference. That is rubbish: stress can cause a bleed, as can coughing, sneezing, intercourse, going to the toilet or heavy lifting, but they say that discharging her made no difference. We want to know the truth. We want to be judged by independent people, not by people who have a conflict of interests.

We, as lay people, undertook an investigation. We approached the hospital under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, but the doctors told us that they were not resourced. If you write to the hospital and they do not know that there is a claim of medical negligence they will say, "It is a 24-hour unit", but when a doctor is aware that there is a claim of negligence, the shutters go up. We want the shutters to be taken down. We can all read—although some of us have difficulty—and understand books. Do we need to get a doctor to tell us what the books mean? We can see the information.

Obviously the body would need to include people with some kind of medical expertise, but it would also need lay people who would look at the facts and figures. I have here a summary of the NHS complaints procedure by the Executive, which states:"The main causes of dissatisfaction among complainants are operational failures: unhelpful, aggressive or arrogant attitudes of staff, poor communication and a lack of information and support."Staff automatically go on the defensive, because we are accusing them of negligence. They must be defensive; they cannot be unbiased. We need doctors on the body, but we also need lay people who will look at the facts and figures and say, "There is something not right here. The times aren't right. There is no blood-pressure reading. There is a fabrication of evidence." We have evidence to back up complaints, not just from us but from other families who have been in touch with us through the website.

For example, we asked a doctor whether the bleeding could have been caused by the stress of having to get up one day to get ready to see the doctor. The neurosurgeon had said, "Assuming that the patient is well, I will allow them to be up and about." We wrote to the doctor and said, "Assuming the patient was not well enough to be up and about, could that have caused the bleed?" He is supposed to be open and honest, but he refused to answer the question.

There were incidences in the initial complaints procedure of the hospital refusing to answer questions and of its solicitor advising it not to discuss the matter further. That leaves us feeling that we have been treated unjustly. If an independent body had considered the complaint, taken the time to go through it and said, "This is the truth. This is what's happened" we would have grieved, but we would not feel that we had been unjustly treated.

There are ways of doing that. When you say to a doctor that there is a claim of negligence, the shutters go up. Somebody needs to look at that and ask how we can get the information without people knowing that their colleague is in trouble. When we went through the complaints procedure, it was shocking. The first questions that were asked were whether I had a tape recorder and whether my friend was a reporter.The people who were present introduced themselves only after we said that we had no tape and that my friend was not a reporter. Police interviews are taped so that nobody can be accused of anything if a complaint is made. We tape meetings in Parliament. Why do hospitals not want to do that when complaints are made? What is wrong with sticking a tape recorder on? That would protect the accused and the accuser. When everything is taped, we know what has been said. Instead, those meetings in hospitals are a closed shop.

I do not know whether the committee received the papers that I sent. We wrote to the General Medical Council to complain about a general practitioner holding a patient's notes for three years and one month, but it did not think that that was anything to worry about. Those notes were withheld from our initial inquiry.

The notes were withheld from the inquiry and were unavailable. They were added to my sister's records only three years after her death. Nobody questions that.

Nobody asks questions. The doctor requested the files on 2 November 2004 and returned them on 26 November 2004. I asked the records office whether nobody had asked questions about that.

We are trying to show how we—the victims—feel. It is not just us. There are many of us.

Yes, but the case has been sisted. The solicitor said that we could not go any further without the positive report. I got the issue raised in court and the case was sisted, or put to sleep, to give me more time to get that report, but I believe that I do not need it because if a doctor has no information on a patient, how can he give an opinion? That is a personal thing, but it also applies in other cases. Rebecca Banks was discharged.

They will take action only if a doctor comes forward with a positive report.

I appreciate the committee's time. Thank you very much.