Tue, 17 Jun 2014

Supplementary evidence to the Home Affairs Committee (incidents at the River House mental health secure unit)

Last month I submitted some Evidence to the Home Affairs Committee's inquiry into policing and mental health. On 2014-05-28, the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust sent a further response in relation to my complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office and I consequently sent the supplementary evidence, copied below, to the Home Affairs Committee (also published on the Parliament's website as PMH0043):

As mentioned in paragraphs 17 of my evidence[1] I have an ongoing complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office about the cover up of the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust concerning incidents at the River House mental secure unit. There has been some progress in this regard which should be of interest to the Home Affairs Committee.

As a response to this ongoing complaint, SLaM has now published a heavily redacted version of its full 105-page report (pdf) into these incidents. [In case this redacted report is updated or removed, a copy, as originally published, is available here (pdf).]

This report is distressing as it is still heavily redacted with snippets of great concern appearing without the original context. I have asked the Information Commissioner’s Office to check the redactions are valid as even without having access to the full document, many redactions are clearly excessive and not justified by the claimed exemptions (these exemptions can be read in SLaM's letter (pdf). [This letter is part of this Freedom of Information request.])

For instance, on p. 19 one interviewed staff is of the opinion that these incidents could have been avoided and that none of the 48 police officers that attended River House that night should have been deployed: ‘[…] it was possible to foresee what would happen, once a decision was taken to [redacted]. In the opinion of [redacted], the situation could have been pre-empted and the police should not have been called.’

However, only a few pages later on p. 23 there are both mentions of the seriousness of how the incident developed and the confusion between staff and the Trust about it: ‘Comment: several staff referred to incident 1 as a hostage situation, whereas according to the Trust Policy (Major Incident Protocol), it is defined as a riot.'

A clear example of the further poor attempt at a cover-up can be seen on p. 31. Most of the paragraphs describing the details of 'Incident 2' are redacted, however we already know from the 12-page summary report (link in footnote 11 in my evidence), and the repeated paragraph in the executive summary (p. 3), that 'In the second incident which occurred at approximately 0250, one patient challenged staff with regard to decisions which had been taken about the management of the four patients involved in the first incident. He accused them of discrimination, believing that there had been a racist motive and that staff had assisted the police to pursue this line of action. He threatened to kill staff and one of the white perpetrators, who he declared had been treated differently to the black perpetrators. This resulted in nursing staff losing control of the ward for a second time when they retreated to the nursing station.’ These allegations of discrimination must not be redacted.

Given that this report is from the largest mental health provider in the country, where two people from the UK’s African Caribbean communities have lost their lives while in the care of this provider at the hands of the Metropolitan Police services, it is particularly important that every member of the committee should be able to read a fully unredacted copy of this report. Considering the serious public safety implications, as well as public confidence concerns in policing and mental health, exemplified by such incidents, it would be helpful for this inquiry to get a full insight into both policing practice on the ground and patient experience at this mental health provider.


[1] PMH0021 David Mery - written evidence (PDF) [also on this blog at Evidence to the Home Affairs Committee's inquiry into policing and mental health]

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