Concerns over £2m cost of hospital deaths investigation
Hampshire's police commissioner calls on Home Office to ease the financial burden
Concerns have been raised about the funding of the criminal investigation into hundreds of deaths at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.
Hampshire police and crime commissioner Donna Jones has described the probe as ‘Britain’s largest murder investigation’ as she revealed she wants the Home Office to fund a bigger share of the £5m-a-year probe.
Detectives are analysing 700 patient records and 15,000 death certificates after an independent panel found 456 people at the Bury Road hospital had their lives shortened through the use of powerful opioids without clinical reason.
Around 150 serving and retired detectives were working on the probe as of March this year and are investigating the deaths between 1987-2001.
Ms Jones described the probe said her force – which botched three previous probes – is paying £2m a year for the next three years.
The Home Office funds the around £3m remaining but Ms Jones wants it to pay more towards the bill.
A Gosport borough councillor raised the tension between funding the probe and current policing in Hampshire.
Speaking at a Police and Crime Panel meeting in Winchester on Friday, Cllr John Beavis said: ‘It’s a significant amount of money – how will this affect your ability to deliver your police and crime plan?
‘You said you would be going to the Home Office to take this up with them.
‘Do you think you’ll be successful in your visit there in getting this charge taken away from your budget?’
Ms Jones said: ‘If this was a national publicly-ordered inquiry such as Hillsborough this would have a different funding package – but this is being treated as a murder investigation and therefore the responsibility falls upon the chief constable.
‘That £2m that we are paying is only 40 per cent of the cost, with most coming from Home Office grants due to the significance of this being Britain’s largest murder investigation – I don’t want to use evocative words but it potentially is, if we get to where we think we will with the number of victims identified.
‘It’s huge. It’s an incredibly large investigation, with more than 100 investigators working on Operation Magenta.
‘It’s disgraceful and appalling, and the sheer volume of criminality that I think is coming out of the investigation is horrendous. What’s more, we could be waiting another three to four years.’
She put her chances at winning more funding at ‘40-50 per cent at best’ but said she was ‘unlikely’ to get more cash ‘because ultimately it’s me versus the Treasury’.
David Wilson’s aunt, 86-year-old Dulcie Middleton, died at Petersfield Hospital in 2001 after being transferred from Gosport.
Her death is the subject of one of four inquests opened last month after families won permission from Hampshire’s coroner to have hearings into the deaths.
Mr Wilson, 75, of Sarisbury Green, is critical of the commissioner’s office ‘looking elsewhere’ for the costs to be covered.
He said: ‘At the end of the day, it’s still the taxpayer who is paying the price for this, and they have done so for far too many years.
‘The investigation by Operation Magenta is a shambles. Many of us have no trust or confidence in it.
‘Many will be pleased to see Mrs Jones describe this as a “murder investigation” and she’s right about the criminality that we’ve seen.’
Responding to Mrs Jones’ comments, deputy assistant commissioner Neil Jerome, from Operation Magenta, explained that 150 people are currently working on the case and a ‘full range’ of criminal offences are being examined, including homocides.
He said: ‘The investigation is progressing well with officers and staff continuing to take witness statements and reviewing millions of pages of documents relating to more than 700 patients.’
The Home Office told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner has received £5.3m of funding from the Police Special Grant since Operation Magenta began.
Government ministers have also agreed to provide up to £6.5m of further funding in 2021-22. The Local Democracy Reporting Service has asked both the Home Office and police and crime commissioner how many years of the investigation this money would cover.