Father hopes his 35-year battle for justice over death of son will finally be vindicated

Martin Shipton

A father who has campaigned relentlessly for justice since his 10 year-old son died as a result of medical negligence 35 years ago hopes a meeting with Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens will lead to a positive outcome at last.

Will Powell’s son Robbie died 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.

Evidence

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.

In late 2024 Mr Powell received an apology from the head of the CPS for the historic mishandling of the case. But he is still campaigning for a public inquiry into what he sees as a long-running cover-up, and the imposition of an individual “duty of candour” to everyone working in the public sector, including the NHS.

A public inquiry into the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium tragedy, in which 97 people died because of inadequate policing, found there had been a cover-up which resulted in fans being unjustly accused of responsibility for the deaths. Subsequently a duty of candour was introduced, under which there is an ethical and legal requirement for public authorities and officials to act in the public interest “with openness, honesty, and transparency about their actions, decisions, and failings”. An intentional or careless failure to discharge these duties, including misleading the public or media, would result in criminal sanctions.

Duty of candour

However, while the duty of candour applies to organisations, it does not apply to individuals.

During his meeting with Ms Stevens, Mr Powell was invited by her to brief a group of legal experts about the implications of extending the duty of candour to individuals.

Until the case of Robbie Powell the existence, or otherwise, of a legal duty of candour for healthcare professionals had not been raised or tested in the UK civil courts.

The statutory payment for Robbie’s death in 1990 was £3,500 if the parents could establish negligence and causation, and approximately £1,500 for funeral costs.

However, the Powells’ claim was estimated to be worth more than £300,000 because of the psychiatric damage caused by the events leading to Robbie’s negligent death, witnessing the death and the post-death cover up.

This included loss of earnings by Robbie’s father, who didn’t work for almost a quarter of a century, as a consequence of Robbie’s death, the cover up and a diagnosis of PTSD. Robbie’s mother was also on medication for more than two decades.

Had it not been for the Powells refusing to accept a six figure out of court settlement in 1996 and pursuing Robbie’s case through the UK and European courts, the absence of a legal duty of candour is unlikely to have been publicly exposed by any other medical negligence case. At the time the Powells had remortgaged their home and were on benefits.

The law, as it stood in 2000, was clearly set out by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) when it found Robbie’s case inadmissible and ruled there had been no breaches of the child’s human rights.

Duty

The ECHR stated that “whilst it is arguable that doctors had a duty not to falsify medical records under the common law … 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.”

As a consequence of refusing the initial offer to settle the case, in 1996, the Powells ended up with no compensation and an order for costs against them.

Mr Powell said: “Ms Stevens was sympathetic to our case and as someone who was a solicitor before becoming an MP understood what we have gone through. But she thinks it would be difficult to hold a public inquiry because of the split in responsibilities between the UK Government and the Welsh Government. I don’t see that as a problem which couldn’t be overcome.

“Nevertheless she has invited me to meet a group of experts to explain the need to have an individual duty of candour. I’m happy to do that and hope Robbie’s Law can be introduced so that doctors and nurses could in future be held responsible as individuals if they failed to tell the truth when something went wrong.”