Lampard Inquiry: Deaths of thousands of mental health patients in Essex to be investigated as families hope for answers
The deaths of around 2,000 mental health patients will be investigated as a long-awaited new public inquiry begins on Monday.
Warning: The following article contains details some readers may find distressing
Families of the patients who died in Essex have been campaigning for years, claiming they have not been told the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
Melanie Leahy, whose son Matthew is among those who died, believes the large number of deaths being investigated will continue to grow.
“I think we’re going to find there’s a lot, lot more. And I think it’s absolutely horrendous,” she told Sky News.
“I believe it’s a cull. It’s a cull of our most vulnerable, our most gentle, our most needy.”
Matthew Leahy, 20, died in November 2012.
He was found unresponsive in his room at the Linden Centre, a secure mental health unit in Chelmsford, eight days after he was sectioned.
Melanie Leahy in 2012
His mother received a call to tell her what had happened. She raced to the hospital but it was too late.
She recalls going in and “there lay Matthew, on the trolley, he had a blue hospital gown on… And in that instant I just wanted to go and grab him and hold him and bring him back to life”.
Mrs Leahy says she was told by staff: “Don’t touch, he’s a crime scene.”
“I was taken into a side room and asked what undertaker I had planned,” she remembers. “I was planning his 21st birthday.”
It was soon after Mr Leahy’s death that she grew concerned that things she was being told about what happened didn’t add up.
Mrs Leahy also has unanswered questions about a serious allegation her son had made days before his death.
Mr Leahy had called his father and told him he had been raped.
He then called police and can be heard on the 999 call telling the operator: “I’ve been raped and the doctors refuse to acknowledge it.”
Police went to the unit but no arrests were made.
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An inquest into Mr Leahy’s death found it occurred after a “series of multiple failings and missed opportunities”. Staff even falsified his care plan after he died.
Matthew Leahy was found unresponsive in his room at the Linden Centre in Essex
During years of fighting for answers, Mrs Leahy has met many other families who have also lost loved ones who were mental health patients in Essex.
In 2021 the Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust was fined £1.5m over failures in care that led to the deaths of 11 patients after pleading guilty to safety breaches that meant it failed to “prevent suicides”.
Since then the number of deaths under investigation has continued to grow.
The 2,000 deaths the new inquiry will examine all took place between the start of 2000 and the end of 2023.
Priya Singh is a lawyer representing dozens of families involved in the inquiry and says the details of cases she’s involved with are harrowing.
“Allegations of physical abuse and sexual abuse have come up many, many, many times,” she told Sky News.
“I don’t feel that we’re just only looking at negligence here. We’re looking at abuse.”
She believes it’s essential that national recommendations are made while the new inquiry is ongoing, to protect mental health patients across the NHS.
“This is definitely happening all over the country. Psychiatric care in this country is almost not fit for purpose right now,” she says.
The inquiry will be known as the Lampard Inquiry, chaired by Baroness Lampard who previously led the investigation into abuse by Jimmy Savile in the NHS.
Paul Scott, chief executive of Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT), said: “We know how painful this time will be for those who have lost loved ones and our thoughts are with them.
“We will continue to do all we can to support Baroness Lampard and her team to provide the answers that patients, families and carers are seeking.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
The last blast furnaces left operating in Britain could see their fate sealed within days, after their Chinese owners took the decision to cut off the crucial supply of ingredients keeping them running.
Jingye, the owner of British Steel in Scunthorpe, has, according to union representatives, cancelled future orders for the iron ore, coal and other raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running.
The upshot is that they may have to close next month – even sooner than the earliest date suggested for its closure.
Read more: Thousands of jobs at risk as British Steel consults unions over closure
The fate of the blast furnaces – the last two domestic sources of virgin steel, made from iron ore rather than recycled – is likely to be determined in a matter of days, with the Department for Business and Trade now actively pondering nationalisation.
The upshot is that even as Britain contends with a trade war across the Atlantic, it is now working against the clock to secure the future of steelmaking at Scunthorpe.
The talks between the government and Jingye broke down last week after the Chinese company, which bought British Steel out of receivership in 2020, rejected a £500m offer of public money to replace the existing furnaces with electric arc furnaces.
The sum is the same one it offered to Tata Steel, which has shut down the other remaining UK blast furnaces in Port Talbot and is planning to build electric furnaces – which have far lower carbon emissions.
These steel workers could soon be out of work
However, the owners argue that the amount is too little to justify extra investment at Scunthorpe, and said last week they were now consulting on the date of shutting both the blast furnaces and the attached steelworks.
Since British Steel is the main provider of steel rails to Network Rail – as well as other construction steels available from only a few sites in the world – the closure would leave the UK more reliant on imports for critical infrastructure sites.
However, since the site belongs to its Chinese owners, a decision to nationalise the site would involve radical steps government officials are wary of taking.
They also fear leaving taxpayers exposed to a potentially loss-making business for the long run.
The dilemma has been heightened by the sharp turn in geopolitical sentiment following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The incipient trade war and threatened cut in American support to Europe have sparked fresh calls for countries to act urgently to secure their own supplies of critical materials, especially those used for defence and infrastructure.
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Gareth Stace, head of UK Steel, the industry lobby group, said: “Talks seem to have broken down between government and British Steel.
“My advice to government is: please, Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, get back round that negotiating table, thrash out a deal, and if a deal can’t be found in the next few days, then I fear for the very future of the sector, but also here for Scunthorpe steelworks.”
British Steel declined to comment.
UK
Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace branded ‘crude attempt to enrich himself’ as Chinese spy documents set to be released
Prince Andrew’s efforts to make money from his Pitch@Palace project have been branded as a “crude attempt to enrich himself” at the expense of “unsuspecting tech founders”, as new documents may shed more light on what he and his team have been attempting to sell.
Today is the deadline for documents to be released relating to Prince Andrew‘s former senior adviser Dominic Hampshire and his interactions with the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo.
In February, an immigration tribunal heard how the intelligence services had contacted Mr Hampshire about Mr Yang back in 2022. Mr Yang helped set up Pitch@Palace China, a branch of the duke’s scheme to help young entrepreneurs.
The alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, has links with Prince Andrew
Yang Tengbo. Pic: Pitch@Palace
Judges banned Mr Yang from the UK, saying his association with a senior royal had made Prince Andrew “vulnerable” and posed a threat to national security. Mr Yang challenged that decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Since that hearing, media organisations have applied for certain documents relating to the case and Mr Hampshire’s support for Mr Yang to be made public. SIAC agreed to release some information of public interest. It is hoped they may include more details on deals that he was trying to do on behalf of Prince Andrew.
So what do we know about potential deals for Pitch@Palace so far?
In February, Sky News confirmed that palace officials had a meeting last summer with tech funding company StartupBootcamp to discuss a potential tie-up between them and Prince Andrew relating to his Pitch@Palace project.
The palace wasn’t involved in the fine details of a deal but wanted guarantees to make sure it wouldn’t impact the Royal Family in the future. Sky News understands from one source that the price being discussed for Pitch was around £750,000 – there are, however, reports that a deal may have stalled.
Photos we found on the Chinese Chamber of Commerce website show an event held in Asia between StartupBootcamp and Innovate Global, believed to be an offshoot of Pitch.
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Who is alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo?
Documents, released in relation to the investigations into Mr Tengbo, have also shown how much the duke has always seen Pitch as a way of potentially making money. One document from 21 August 2021 clearly states “the duke needed money at the time, and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.
But Prince Andrew’s apparent intention to use Pitch to make money has led to concerns about whether he is unfairly using the contacts and information he gained when he was a working royal.
Norman Baker, former MP and author of books on royal finances, believes it is “a crude attempt to enrich himself” and goes against what the tech entrepreneurs thought they were signing up for.
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He told Sky News: “The data given by these business people was given on the basis it was an official operation and not something for Prince Andrew, and so in my view, Prince Andrew had no right legally or morally to take the data which has been collected, a huge amount of data, and sell it…
“And quite clearly if you’re going to sell it off to StartupBootcamp, that is not what people had in mind. The entrepreneurs who joined Pitch@Palace did not do so to enrich Prince Andrew,” he said.
Rich Wilson was one tech entrepreneur who was approached at the start of Pitch@Palace to sign up, but he stepped away when he spotted a clause in the contract saying they’d be entitled to 2% equity in any funding he secured.
He feels Prince Andrew is continuing to use those he made a show of supporting.
He said: “It makes me feel sick. I think it’s terrible – that he is continuing to exploit unsuspecting tech founders in this way. A lot of them, I’m quite grey and old in the tooth now, I saw it coming, but clearly most didn’t. And a lot of them were quite young.
“It’ll be their first venture and you’re learning on the trot, so to speak. So to take advantage of people in such a major way – that’s an awful, sickening thing to do.”
We approached StartupBootcamp who said they had no comment to make, and the Duke of York’s office did not respond.
With reports that a deal may have stalled, it could be a big setback for the duke – especially with questions still about how he’ll continue to pay for his home on the Windsor estate now that the King no longer gives him financial support.
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