Manchester Arena bombing victim would have survived but for ‘inadequate’ emergency response, inquiry finds
A victim of the Manchester Arena bombing would likely have survived had it not been for the inadequate emergency response, an inquiry has found.
John Atkinson’s injuries were “survivable” but he did not receive the “treatment and care he should have”, said Sir John Saunders, chairman of the Manchester Arena Inquiry.
Mr Atkinson, a 28-year-old healthcare worker, was one of 22 innocent people who lost their lives following the suicide bombing at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
A report examining the emergency response to the attack found that “significant aspects… went wrong” and “the performance of the emergency services was far below the standard” it should have been.
“Some of what went wrong had serious and, in the case of John Atkinson, fatal consequences for those directly affected by the explosion,” Sir John said.
The inquiry has heard that firefighters did not arrive at Manchester Arena until two hours after the bombing; only one paramedic entered the blast scene in the first 40 minutes, and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) did not declare a major incident for more than two hours.
The father of the youngest victim – eight-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos – described the emergency response as “shameful” and “inadequate”, with some experts telling the inquiry she could have survived had the response been different.
Saffie-Rose Roussos was the youngest victim of the attack
However Sir John concluded that “there was only a remote possibility that she could have survived with different treatment and care”.
“On the evidence that I have accepted, what happened to Saffie-Rose Roussos represents a terrible burden of injury,” he said.
“It is highly likely that her death was inevitable even if the most comprehensive and advanced medical treatment had been initiated immediately after injury.”
Emergency response ‘prevented victim’s survival’
In the second of three reports into the Manchester Arena bombing, Sir John found that 20 of the 22 people who died in the attack suffered injuries that were “unsurvivable”.
However in the case of Mr Atkinson, the retired High Court judge said that had the victim “received the treatment and care he should have, it is likely that he would have survived”.
“It is likely that inadequacies in the emergency response prevented his survival,” Sir John added.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Arena bombing victims ‘let down’
Mr Atkinson, a fitness fanatic whose family described him as their “heart and soul”, had received tickets to the Ariana Grande concert as a Christmas present and went with a friend.
He was standing just six metres away from Salman Abedi when the bomber detonated his device at about 10.30pm on 22 May 2017, causing severe injuries to Mr Atkinson’s legs.
Read more:
How emergency crews responded to arena bombing
Security failings that led to Manchester attack
The inquiry heard Mr Atkinson, from Bury, Greater Manchester, lost a significant amount of blood as he laid in agony on the foyer floor for 47 minutes before he was carried downstairs by police on a makeshift stretcher to a casualty clearing area at Victoria station.
More than 20 minutes passed – as ambulances queued outside – before he went into cardiac arrest at 11.47pm and was finally rushed to Manchester Royal Infirmary at midnight, where he was pronounced dead about 25 minutes later.
A member of the public, Ronald Blake, held an improvised tourniquet on Mr Atkinson’s right leg for up to an hour before paramedics reached him.
Only three paramedics entered the area known as the City Room, where the bomb went off, on the night – two of them just a few minutes before Mr Atkinson was evacuated.
He was not triaged, assessed or assisted by North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) personnel during his time in the foyer.
In his report, Sir John said he accepted the conclusion of experts that Mr Atkinson “would have survived if given prompt and expert medical treatment”.
He concluded that medical tourniquets should have been applied to Mr Atkinson’s legs and dressings applied to his wounds earlier.
The inquiry chairman said “responsibility for that failure” rested with the arena’s operator SMG and the management of Emergency Training UK, which was contracted to provide healthcare at the venue.
He added that more paramedics should have been in the City Room earlier and they would likely have “identified the need for urgent treatment and evacuation” of Mr Atkinson.
Police at the scene of the bombing on 22 May 2017
“That did not occur,” Sir John said. “Responsibility for that failure rests with NWAS.
“Such treatment would, I am satisfied, have enabled John Atkinson to arrive at hospital prior to having a cardiac arrest and would probably have saved his life.”
Sir John also said that Mr Atkinson should have been moved from the City Room promptly and if firefighters had been at the scene at the time, the victim would have been “prioritised for evacuation”.
He also pointed out that if more ambulances had been at the scene shortly after 11pm, Mr Atkinson would have received treatment and he would have been taken to hospital sooner.
“Either way, he would have reached hospital before having a cardiac arrest and is likely to have survived,” Sir John said.
“John Atkinson would probably have survived had it not been for inadequacies in the emergency response.”
The victims of the Manchester Arena bombing
‘Mistakes’ made by emergency services
In his report, Sir John said “significant aspects of the emergency response on 22 May 2017 went wrong” and “this should not have happened”.
The inquiry chairman said he had “no doubt that lives were saved by the emergency response”, but added: “Looked at overall, and objectively, the performance of the emergency services was far below the standard it should have been.”
He said GMP “did not lead the response” the way it should have; Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) “failed to turn up at the scene at a time when they could provide the greatest assistance”; and NWAS “failed to send sufficient paramedics” into the City Room and “did not use available stretchers to remove casualties in a safe way”.
The inquiry heard that police officers, arena staff and members of the public were forced to carry injured people using advertising hoardings, crowd barriers and tables due to the lack of stretchers, which Sir John said was “a painful and unsafe way of moving the injured”.
He added that “one of the most emotional and upsetting parts of the inquiry” was hearing of the “despair” of those injured, who could hear ambulance sirens outside but saw few paramedics arrive.
Among the failures identified in the report:
• Inspector Dale Sexton, the force duty officer at GMP’s headquarters, became “overburdened” and made a “significant mistake” in failing to declare a major incident in the early stages of the emergency response. GMP only declared a major incident close to 1am – two and a half hours after the bomb went off
• After inaccurate reports of gunshots, Insp Sexton declared Operation Plato – the emergency response to an attack by a marauding terrorist with a gun – but failed to communicate this to other emergency services
• GMFRS station manager Andrew Berry sent firefighters to Philips Park fire station, three miles away from the scene, meaning some firefighters were driving away from the incident and past ambulances travelling in the opposite direction
• Inspector Benjamin Dawson, from British Transport Police (BTP), declared a major incident around 10 minutes after the attack but did not tell GMP or GMFRS
• There was “substantial confusion” over the location of a rendezvous point for emergency services, with each service choosing their own
• NWAS declared a major incident about 15 minutes after the attack but this was not shared with any other emergency service
Sir John said “there was the failure of anyone in a senior position in GMFRS to take a grip of the situation during the critical period of the response”.
He acknowledged he had “criticised a large number of people” who he considered had “made mistakes on the night”, adding that “some of those criticisms may seem harsh, particularly given the situation that those individuals were faced with”.
“They were trying to do their best,” he added. “I do understand the enormous pressures that they were acting under.
“They had to do many things in a short time and it may not be surprising that things went wrong. I am not unsympathetic to them.
“But I need to identify mistakes where they have been made because otherwise there is no prospect of preventing them in the future.”
Read more:
The missed opportunities to stop Salman Abedi
Manchester Arena lives could have been saved – but warning was ‘fobbed off’
Salman Abedi carried out the suicide bombing
Among a series of recommendations, Sir John said that “in the event that public funding cuts are in the future considered necessary by the government, the Home Office should consider whether some funding arrangement for police services different from that applied in the post-2010 period is necessary”.
Responding to the report, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said it was “a devastating reminder of the Manchester Arena attack and the horror of that night”.
“Without doubt, our emergency services show incredible courage when responding to incidents of this magnitude,” she said.
“It’s right that we reflect and work together to learn from this tragedy. I will carefully consider the recommendations made so far to strengthen our response.”
Sir John’s first report on security issues at the arena venue was issued last June and highlighted a string of “missed opportunities” to identify Abedi as a threat before he walked across the City Room foyer and detonated his shrapnel-laden device.
The third and final report will focus on the radicalisation of Abedi and what the intelligence services and counter-terrorism police knew, and if they could have prevented the attack. It will be published at a later date.
UK
Met Police release footage as more than 1,000 arrests made using live facial recognition technology
More than 1,000 criminals, including a paedophile found with a six-year-old girl, have been arrested by the Metropolitan Police using live facial recognition (LFR) cameras.
David Cheneler, 73, was among 93 registered sex offenders held by Met officers using the controversial technology since the start of last year.
He was discovered with the girl after he was identified by a camera on a police van in Camberwell, south London, in January.
Cheneler, from Lewisham, was jailed for two years in May after admitting breaching his sexual harm prevention order by being with a child under the age of 14.
The Met said a total of 1,035 arrests have been made using live facial recognition technology – where live footage is recorded of people as they walk past, capturing their faces, which are then compared against a database of wanted offenders.
If a match is determined, the system creates an alert which is assessed by an officer, who may decide to speak to the person.
They include more than 100 people alleged to have been involved in serious violence against women and girls (VAWG) offences such as strangulation, stalking, domestic abuse, and rape.
Adenola Akindutire admitted charges including robbery. Pic: Met Police
Adenola Akindutire was stopped during an operation in Stratford and arrested over the machete robbery of a Rolex watch, which left the victim with life-changing injuries after the attack in Hayes, west London.
Police said the 22-year-old, who was linked to a similar incident and had been released on bail, was in possession of a false passport and could have evaded arrest if it wasn’t for the technology.
Akindutire, of no fixed address, admitted charges including robbery, attempted robbery, grievous bodily harm, possession of a false identity document and two counts of possession of a bladed article and faces sentencing at Isleworth Crown Court.
Darren Dubarry was stopped on his bike. Pic: Met Police
Dubarry was caught with stolen designer clothes. Pic: Met Police
Darren Dubarry, 50, was already wanted for theft when he was caught with stolen designer clothing in Dalston, east London, after riding past an LFR camera on his bike.
The 50-year-old, from Stratford, east London, was fined after pleading guilty to handling stolen goods.
Lindsey Chiswick, the Met’s LFR lead, hailed the 1,000 arrest milestone as “a demonstration of how cutting-edge technology can make London safer by removing dangerous offenders from our streets”.
“Live Facial Recognition is a powerful tool, which is helping us deliver justice for victims, including those who have been subjected to horrendous offences, such as rape and serious assault,” she said.
“It is not only saving our officers’ valuable time but delivering faster, more accurate results to catch criminals – helping us be more efficient than ever before.”
The Met say “robust safeguards” are in place, which ensure no biometric data is retained from anyone who walks past an LFR camera who isn’t wanted by police.
Almost 2 million faces scanned
But human rights group Liberty is calling for new laws to be introduced to govern how police forces use the technology after Liberty Investigates found almost 1.9 million faces were scanned by the Met between January 2022 and March this year.
Read more from Sky News:
Leaseholders to get stronger rights, powers and protections
PM told to ‘use Rayner – people like her’
Charlie Whelton, Liberty policy and campaigns officer, said: “We all want to feel safe in our communities, but technology is advancing quickly, and we need to make sure that our laws keep up.
“Any tech which has the potential to infringe on our rights in the way scanning and identifying millions of people does needs to have robust safeguards around its use to protect us all from abuse of power as we go about our daily lives.
“There is currently no overarching law governing police use of facial recognition in the UK, and we shouldn’t leave police forces to come up with these frameworks on their own.
“Almost two million faces have been scanned in London before Parliament has even decided what the laws should be.
“We need to catch up with other countries, and the law needs to catch up with the use. Parliament must legislate now and ensure that safeguards are in place to protect people’s rights where the police use this technology.”
July 5 2024, 1pm: I remember the moment so clearly.
Keir Starmer stepped out of his sleek black car, grasped the hand of his wife Vic, dressed in Labour red, and walked towards a jubilant crowd of Labour staffers, activists and MPs waving union jacks and cheering a Labour prime minister into Downing Street for the first time in 14 years.
Starmer and his wife took an age to get to the big black door, as they embraced those who had helped them win this election – their children hidden in the crowd to watch their dad walk into Number 10.
Politics latest: Corbyn starts new party
Keir Starmer, not the easiest public speaker, came to the podium and told the millions watching this moment the “country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal”.
He spoke about the “weariness at the heart of the nation” and “the lack of trust” in our politicians as a “wound” that “can only be healed by actions not words”. He added: “This will take a while but the work of change begins immediately.”
A loveless landslide
That was a day in which this prime minister made history. His was a victory on a scale that comes around but one every few decades.
He won the largest majority in a quarter of a century and with it a massive opportunity to become one of the most consequential prime ministers of modern Britain – alongside the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.
But within the win was a real challenge too.
👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈
Starmer’s was a loveless landslide, won on a lower share of the vote than Blair in all of his three victories and 6 percentage points lower than the 40% Jeremy Corbyn secured in the 2017 general election.
It was the lowest vote share than any party forming a post-war majority government. Support for Labour was as shallow as it was wide.
In many ways then, it was a landslide built on shaky foundations: low public support, deep mistrust of politicians, unhappiness with the state of public services, squeezed living standards and public finances in a fragile state after the huge cost of the pandemic and persistent anaemic growth.
Put another way, the fundamentals of this Labour government, whatever Keir Starmer did, or didn’t do, were terrible. Blair came in on a new dawn. This Labour government, in many ways, inherited the scorched earth.
The one flash of anger I’ve seen
For the past year, I have followed Keir Starmer around wherever he goes. We have been to New York, Washington (twice), Germany (twice), Brazil, Samoa, Canada, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Brussels. I can’t even reel off the places we’ve been to around the UK – but suffice to say we’ve gone to all the nations and regions.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Starmer pushed on scale of “landslide” election win
What I have witnessed in the past year is a prime minister who works relentlessly hard. When we flew for 27 hours non-stop to Samoa last autumn to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit, every time I looked up at the plane, I saw a solitary PM, his headlight shining on his hair, working away as the rest of us slept or watched films.
He also seems almost entirely unflappable. He rarely expresses emotion. The only time I have seen a flash of anger was when I questioned him about accepting freebies in a conversation that ended up involving his family, and when Elon Musk attacked Jess Phillips.
I have also witnessed him being buffeted by events in a way that he would not have foreseen. The arrival of Donald Trump into the White House has sucked the prime minister into a whirlwind of foreign crises that has distracted him from domestic events.
When he said over the weekend, as a way of explanation not an excuse, that he had been caught up in other matters and taken his eye off the ball when it came to the difficulties of welfare reform, much of Westminster scoffed, but I didn’t.
I had followed him around in the weeks leading up to that vote. We went from the G7 in Canada, to the Iran-Israel 12-day war, to the NATO summit in the Hague, as the prime minister dealt with, in turn, the grooming gangs inquiry decision, the US-UK trade deal, Donald Trump, de-escalation in the Middle East and a tricky G7 summit, the assisted dying vote, the Iran-Israel missile crisis.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
In September 2024, the PM defended taking £20k GCSE donation
He was taking so many phone calls on Sunday morning from Chequers, that he couldn’t get back to London for COBRA [national emergency meeting] because he couldn’t afford to not have a secure phone line for the hour-long drive back to Downing Street.
He travelled to NATO, launched the National Security Review and agreed to the defence alliance’s commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. So when he came back from the Hague into a full-blown welfare rebellion, I did have some sympathy for him – he simply hadn’t had the bandwidth to deal with the rebellion as it began to really gather steam.
Dealing with rebellion
Where I have less sympathy with the prime minister and his wider team is how they let it get to that point in the first place.
Keir Starmer wasn’t able to manage the latter stages of the rebellion, but the decisions made months earlier set it up in all its glory, while Downing Street’s refusal to heed the concerns of MPs gave it momentum to spiral into a full-blown crisis.
The whips gave warning after 120 MPs signed a letter complaining about the measures, the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall had done the same, but Starmer and Reeves were, in the words of one minister, “absolutist”.
“They assumed people complaining about stuff do it because they are weak, rather than because they are strong,” said the minister, who added that following the climbdown, figures in Number 10 “just seemed completely without knowledge of the gravity of it”.
That he marks his first anniversary with the humiliation of having to abandon his flagship welfare reforms or face defeat in the Commons – something that should be unfathomable in the first year of power with a majority that size – is disappointing.
To have got it that wrong, that quickly with your parliamentary party, is a clear blow to his authority and is potentially more chronic. I am not sure yet how he recovers.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’
Keir Starmer said he wanted to rule country first, party second, but finds himself pinned by a party refusing to accept his centrist approach. Now, ministers tell MPs that there will be a financial consequence of the government’s decision to delay tightening the rules on claiming disability benefits beyond the end of 2026.
A shattered Rachel Reeves now has to find the £5bn she’d hoped to save another way. She will defend her fiscal rules, which leaves her the invidious choice of tax rises or spending cuts. Sit back and watch for the growing chorus of MPs that will argue Starmer needs to raise more taxes and pivot to the left.
That borrowing costs of UK debt spiked on Wednesday amid speculation that the chancellor might resign or be sacked, is a stark reminder that Rachel Reeves, who might be unpopular with MPs, is the markets’ last line of defence against spending-hungry Labour MPs. The party might not like her fiscal rules, but the markets do.
What’s on the horizon for year two?
The past week has set the tone now for the prime minister’s second year in office. Those around him admit that the parliamentary party is going to be harder to govern. For all talk of hard choices, they have forced the PM to back down from what were cast as essential welfare cuts and will probably calculate that they can move him again if they apply enough pressure.
There is also the financial fall-out, with recent days setting the scene for what is now shaping up to be another definitive budget for a chancellor who now has to fill a multi-billion black hole in the public finances.
But I would argue that the prime minister has misjudged the tone as he marks that first year. Faced with a clear crisis and blow to his leadership, instead of tackling that head on the prime minister sought to ignore it and try to plough on, embarking on his long-planned launch of the 10-year NHS plan to mark his year in office, as if the chancellor’s tears and massive Labour rebellions over the past 48 hours were mere trifles.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?
It was inevitable that this NHS launch would be overshadowed by the self-inflicted shambles over welfare and the chancellor’s distress, given this was the first public appearance of both of them since it had all blown up.
But when I asked the prime minister to explain how it had gone so wrong on welfare and how he intended to rebuild your trust and authority in your party, he completely ignored my question. Instead, he launched into a long list of Labour’s achievements in his first year: 4 million extra NHS appointments; free school meals to half a million more children; more free childcare; the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation; and the US, EU and India free trade deals.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Starmer defends reaction to Reeves crying in PMQs
I can understand the point he was making and his frustration that his achievements are being lost in the maelstrom of the political drama. But equally, this is politics, and he is the prime minister. This is his story to tell, and blowing up your welfare reform on the anniversary week of your government is not the way to do it.
Is Starmer failing to articulate his mission?
For Starmer himself, he will do what I have seen him do before when he’s been on the ropes, dig in, learn from the errors and try to come back stronger. I have heard him in recent days talk about how he has always been underestimated and then proved he can do it – he is approaching this first term with the same grit.
If you ask his team, they will tell you that the prime minister and this government is still suffering from the unending pessimism that has pervaded our national consciousness; the sense politics doesn’t work for working people and the government is not on their side.
Read more from Sky News:
Analysis: PM’s authority damaged
Numbers behind housing pledge
Fiscal rules are silly but important
Starmer knows what he needs to do: restore the social contract, so if you work hard you should get on in life. The spending review and its massive capital investment, the industrial strategy and strategic defence review – three pieces of work dedicated to investment and job creation – are all geared to trying to rebuild the country and give people a brighter future.
But equally, government has been, admit insiders, harder than they thought as they grapple with multiple crises facing the country – be that public services, prisons, welfare.
It has also lacked direction. Sir Keir would do well to focus on following his Northern Star. I think he has one – to give working people a better life and ordinary people the chance to fulfil their potential.
But somehow, the prime minister is failing to articulate his mission, and he knows that. When I asked him at the G7 summit in Canada what his biggest mistake of the first year was, he told me: “We haven’t always told our story as well as we should.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Beth Rigby asks the PM to reflect on a year in office
I go back to the Keir Starmer of July 5 2024. He came in on a landslide, he promised to change the country, he spoke of the lack of trust and the need to prove to the public that the government could make their lives better through actions not words.
In this second year, he is betting that the legislation he has passed and strategies he has launched will drive that process of change, and in doing so, build back belief.
But it is equally true that his task has become harder these past few weeks. He has spilled so much blood over welfare for so little gain, his first task is to reset the operation to better manage the party and rebuild support.
But bigger than that, he needs to find a way to not just tell his government’s story but sell his government’s story. He has four years left.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike