‘End the loophole that lets doctors lie about patients’ deaths’, says campaigning father

Martin Shipton

A campaigning father whose son died as a result of medical negligence says it is time a loophole was plugged that currently places no obligation on doctors to tell the truth about a loved one’s death.

Will Powell’s son Robbie died in 1990 of Addison’s disease, a rare illness that stops the adrenal glands pumping vital hormones. Doctors did not act on a suspicion that he had the condition and he did not receive the treatment that would have saved his life.

Six years later the NHS accepted that negligence had occurred at Morriston Hospital, Swansea.

An initial police inquiry said there was no evidence to justify criminal proceedings against doctors they coincidentally employed as police surgeons, but, after pressure from Robbie’s father Will Powell, a reinvestigation of the case by a senior detective from West Midlands Police resulted in a recommendation that 35 possible charges should be brought against five named doctors and a secretary.

Evidence had emerged of documents being tampered with, and a secretary confirmed during the inquiry that she had been asked to type a backdated medical referral note which gave a falsely positive impression of the care Robbie received.

In 2003 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) agreed there was evidence that various doctors had been negligent or grossly negligent and/or involved in forgery and perversion of the course of justice. Yet it concluded that none of them should be prosecuted because too much time had elapsed and that the police had effectively given them immunity from prosecution.

Years before Mr Powell had initiated a civil action against the then West Glamorgan Health Authority in a bid to establish the truth.

He told Nation.Cymru: “In 1996 the GPs and the health authority approached my solicitor and offered to settle Robbie’s case out of court. The compensation for Robbie’s negligent death and the psychological injuries caused to my wife and I, as a consequence of Robbie’s death, and the cover up, was £300,000, which included my loss of earnings – I was the bread winner.

“We refused to settle as we wanted the case heard in court. It wasn’t about compensation for us – it was about the truth and exposing the cover up. The health authority then admitted liability and paid £80,000 into court for Robbie’s death and my wife’s psychological injury.

“The doctors claimed that I wasn’t entitled to compensation because there was no post-death duty for them to tell me the truth. The psychiatrist, who assessed me, claimed that my PTSD was caused after Robbie had died, as a consequence of my ‘belief’ that Robbie needlessly died, that his medical records had been falsified and that there was a cover up by the doctors [now proven].

“In 1996 we challenged the absence of the legal duty in the High Court in Cardiff. However, the judge heard the case in private and ruled that there was no legal duty of candour and struck out my case. I was given leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal. There was no adverse publicity because the case was heard in private.

“The Court of Appeal heard the appeal in July 1997 and upheld the judgement of the High Court. We were refused leave to appeal to the House of lords and the £80,000, paid into court for Diane, was taken in its entirety for legal costs. There was also an order for costs against us for the deficit. The headline in the national media was ‘A Doctor’s Right to Lie’.

“We petitioned the House of Lords praying for leave to appeal. However, our petition was refused.

European Court of Human Rights

“We then submitted the case to the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] in 1998 who found our application inadmissible. In May 2000 the ECHR set out the law as it existed then and now: ‘Whilst it is arguable that doctors had a duty not to falsify medical records under the common law (Sir Donaldson MR’s ‘duty of candour’), before Powell v Boladz there was no binding decision of the courts as to the existence of such a duty. As the law stands now, however, doctors have no duty to give parents of a child who died as a result of their negligence a truthful account of the circumstances of the death, nor even to refrain from deliberately falsifying records’

“In 1999 the House of Commons Health Select Committee recommended a legal duty of candour as a consequence of Robbie’s case and the 1997 Court of Appeal ruling. It was rejected by the then Labour Government.

“The legal duty of candour was recommended again following the Inquiry into the failings of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust during which Robbie’s case was mentioned.

“In 2012 Robbie’s case was mentioned in the House of Lords re the legal duty of candour and was stated to be the origin of the campaign.

“In 2014 the Care Quality Commission [CQC] introduced an NHS organisational legal duty of candour but there is still no Individual legal duty of candour, which is known as Robbie’s Law. The CQC acknowledges on its website that it was Robbie’s case that exposed its absence.

‘Legal duty of candour’

“In 2018 an NHS organisational legal duty of candour was introduced in Scotland, and in 2023 in Wales. In 2025, during a podcast interview with Andy Burnham, he acknowledged that we were the ‘pioneers’ of the legal duty of candour.

“In July this year the Public Office (Accountability) Bill was passed at Westminster, which includes a legal duty of candour for all public officials.

“Had it not been for Robbie’s case exposing its absence in the UK courts and the ECHR, it is unlikely that discussions regarding the introduction of a legal duty of candour would have been on the table for discussion, let alone introduced into law.

“What is now being proposed in the Senedd is a legal duty for all Welsh politicians to be honest in the lead-up to elections which, in effect, is a legal duty of candour and should apply, in my view, to all Senedd Members, at all times.

“However, what Wales and the UK need is a freestanding individual legal duty of candour for all public officials.

“As the law stands, if individuals lie, the organisation that employs them can disclaim responsibility. Equally, as in Robbie’s case, the regulator may not necessarily find against the individuals who have told lies.

“I believe there is a vital need to change the law and close this loophole.”

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