Maria Caulfield, the mental health minister, told MPs on Thursday that she and Health Secretary Steve Barclay were considering whether to launch an inquiry because the same failings were occurring so often in so many different parts of the country. They would make a final decision “in the coming days”, she told the House of Commons, answering an urgent question tabled by her Labor shadow, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan. An independent inquest found this week that three teenage girls – Christie Harnett, 17, Nadia Sharif, 17, and Emily Moore, 18 – took their own lives within eight months after receiving inadequate care from the Tees, Esk and Wear valleys. (TEWV) North East England NHS Mental Health Trust. They died following “multifaceted and systemic failures” by the trust, particularly at West Lane Hospital in Middlesbrough, the inquest heard. Allin-Khan pointed to a number of scandals that have come to light, often through media investigations, about dangerously poor mental health care provided by NHS services and also private companies in England, including Essex and Greater Manchester. “Patients are dying, being bullied, dehumanized, abused, and their medical records are being falsified, an egregious breach of patient safety,” Allin-Khan said. “The government has failed to learn from past failures.” Caulfield acknowledged that the failings at TEWV were not isolated and that other recent scandals meant ministers and the NHS urgently needed to know how deep the poor care ran. “I am not satisfied that the failures we have heard about today are necessarily isolated incidents in a handful of trusts,” she said. Caulfield said she would meet Claire Murdoch, NHS England’s clinical director of mental health, and Dr Henrietta Hughes, the newly appointed patient safety commissioner, immediately to agree what to do. NHS England had recently instigated a ‘system-wide inquiry into its safety and quality [mental health] services in all areas,” especially child and adolescent mental health services, the minister said. Caulfield told MPs: “On the issue of a public inquiry, I’m not necessarily saying there won’t be a public inquiry but it has to be on a national basis and not just on an individual trust basis because, as we’ve seen in [scandals involving NHS] maternity [care]very often when we repeat these surveys, they produce the same information, and we need to systematically learn how to reduce these failures.” He added: “The issue I have with a public inquiry is that it is not timely, it can take many years, and clearly we have some cases now that need some urgent review and some urgent action.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Ministers may commission a “rapid review” instead of a public inquiry to produce evidence and recommendations for action more quickly, Caulfield added. Deborah Coles, director of Inquest, a charity which helps families of people who have died while receiving NHS mental health care, said the Government should order a “full and fearless” public inquiry as a matter of urgency as a prelude to ordering sweeping changes. “Bereaved families are very familiar with hearing about new reviews or investigations. Previous critical inquiries, inspections and investigations of mental health services have failed to force the transformation of culture and leadership that is required,” he said. “It is our view, and the view of many of the families we work with, that a national, statutory inquiry should be carried out to facilitate a full and fearless examination of the issues in mental health services that lead to neglect, abuse and deaths . Nothing less is enough.”
