The father of a seven-week-old boy who died after being breastfed in a baby carrier is calling for increased safety standards around baby slings.
James Alderman, who was known as Jimmy, was being breastfed “hands-free” within a baby carrier worn by his mother while she moved around their home.
Jimmy’s father, George Alderman, told Sky News: “Baby slings are sold as being a lifesaver, allowing you to get on with your business while your baby’s safe and close to you, but in this instance, we had our baby close, but not safe.”
The inquest into his death heard Jimmy was in an unsafe position too far down the sling.
Mr Alderman said that while much of the available advice around slings focused on them not being too tight, few people were aware of the danger of the sling not being tight enough, and so allowing the baby to slump.
Explaining what medical experts think happened to Jimmy, he said: “After he’d been feeding, he fell asleep and then he slumped forwards. Then, because his head was covered and he had his chin against his chest, he was facing downwards.
“Nothing was covering his face, but because of the position he was in, that meant that not enough oxygen was going into his lungs because he was small and not fully developed, and that’s why he stopped breathing.”
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Resuscitation was started straight away, but Jimmy died three days later on 11 October 2023.
Mr Alderman said that while many brands of baby carriers said they were safe for breastfeeding, the lack of advice around how to safely do it meant that parents were “left to work it out by themselves”.
He said that during Jimmy’s inquest, it also became clear that there was no mandatory safety standard for baby carriers.
‘How can a bag of sand represent a baby?’
While items such as baby car seats are heavily regulated in the UK, the standards are voluntary around slings and carriers, meaning companies can perform different tests in different ways.
Mr Alderman said: “Some use weighted dolls, some use bags of sand. How a bag of sand can accurately represent a baby, I just don’t know.”
He said while there was currently a European working group looking at setting up a standardised mandatory test for baby carriers (including the UK) it could take three years or more to complete.
Mr Alderman said he was aware of at least two other cases in the UK and Ireland linked to slings where young infants had died.
Advice completely absent or ‘unhelpful’
At Jimmy’s inquest, senior coroner for west London, Lydia Brown, said there was insufficient information to inform parents of the safe positioning of young babies within carriers, particularly in relation to breastfeeding.
In her report, she criticised the lack of information on the risk of a baby “slumping”, and failure to advise that breastfeeding an infant under four months “hands-free” was unsafe due to risk of suffocation.
She also criticised the total lack of guidance from the NHS and said the “tips” provided on the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) website were “unhelpful”.
She concluded that “action should be taken to prevent future deaths”.
Copies of the coroner’s Prevention of Future Deaths Report were sent to the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care.
‘Positive change from something so awful’
Mr Alderman said that while questioning “Why has this happened to us?”, the family were keen to do what they could to stop other families going through the same experience.
Mr Alderman said: “If we can’t do something to stop it happening, to make sure there is a positive change and, if needs be, for the government to step in and make sure there’s a mandatory test for all of these things, then that is something that can come from something that’s been so awful.”
He said fundraising for Jimmy’s Cuddle, a charity they set up to support charitable causes in Jimmy’s memory, was a good way to not only raise funds, but also raise awareness and share memories.
He said: “Jimmy only had seven weeks with us and we want to keep his memory going for longer than that, and give him some sort of life that he never got.”
Mr Alderman and his wife Ellie are expecting their third child in early February. The couple also have a three-year-old son called Arthur.
Anyone dealing with the loss of a baby can call the Lullaby Trust on 0808 802 6868 or email support@lullabytrust.org.uk
Steve Barton is angry, and he has every right to be.
The 68-year-old retired engineer stares at his medical notes that, he says, expose in black and white the moment his life changed forever.
“I have somehow missed… due to my mistake,” a doctor writes in one of the notes, after it became apparent that Mr Barton had not been urgently referred to specialists over what later became an aggressive form of throat cancer.
Steve now has a prosthetic voice box and is one of many British patients fighting medical negligence claims after being misdiagnosed.
NHS officials in Scotland are dealing with thousands of cases annually. Meanwhile, Westminster’s Public Affairs Committee (PAC) recently disclosed England’s Department of Health and Social Care has set aside £58.2bn to settle clinical lawsuits arising before 2024.
Mr Barton, who lives in Alloa near Stirling, repeatedly contacted his doctors after he began struggling with his breathing, speaking and swallowing. His concerns were recorded by the NHS as sinus issues.
As panic grew and his voice became weaker, Mr Barton paid to see a private consultant who revealed the devastating news that a massive tumour had grown on his larynx and required part of his throat to be removed immediately.
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“I am angry, I am upset, I don’t want anyone else to go through this,” Mr Barton told Sky News.
“There were at least four, possibly five, conversations on the phone. He [the doctor] said to me that it sounds like I’ve got reflux.”
‘He was palmed off’
Mr Barton is now unable to work and cannot shower by himself because if water enters the hole in his neck, he could drown.
And a windy day can cause a debilitating coughing fit if a gust catches his prosthetic voice box.
Image: Steve Barton is one of thousands battling medical negligence cases
Asked if he believes this was avoidable, Mr Barton replied: “Absolutely. 100%.”
His wife, Heather, told Sky News: “He hates this. You see him crying. It breaks my heart. It’s been hard emotionally.”
She added: “Everybody knows their own body. He was palmed off and the consequence is a neck dissection. It [life] changed overnight.”
Legal battle over compensation
The Barton family have been locked in a legal battle over their ordeal with the Medical and Dental Defence Union Scotland (MDDUS) – a body which indemnifies GPs.
It has not admitted formal liability in this case but has agreed to settle financial compensation to Mr Barton.
Izabela Wosiak, a solicitor from Irwin Mitchell who represents the Bartons, said: “Cases like Steve’s are complex and usually quite difficult, but solicitors have accepted there was no defence to this case.
“They have arranged to make an interim payment; however we are still in the process of negotiating final settlement.”
A MDDUS spokeswoman refused to comment while talks are being finalised.
What is the scale of medical negligence in Britain?
The NHS in Scotland is under the devolved control of the Scottish government.
Figures suggest there were almost 14,000 clinical negligence claims and incidents in 2023/24, an increase on the previous year.
It comes as PAC warned that the total liabilities in England’s health service has hit £58.2bn.
PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP told Sky News: “I extend my sympathies to Steve and his family. Unfortunately, he is not alone.
“Some are really heart-wrenching tales. Every single claim somebody is involved, someone has been in some way injured, so this is a terrible thing.
“We are going to be working on how we can make the whole system less litigious and get compensation paid out quickly because if the state does harm to somebody, the least they could do is to compensate them as quickly as possible.”
Paul Whiteing, the chief executive of patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents, told Sky News: “The NHS itself last year [in England] paid out just over £5bn in compensational set aside money for compensation that it would need to pay out.
“It’s a huge cost and of course that doesn’t speak to the cost to every individual, every family, every person who is impacted by the consequences of some form of medical accident and the trauma that can go with that.”
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of the crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system ‘frustrating’ and ‘stressed’
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for others.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
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She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.
More than 70 people have been arrested at protests against Palestine Action being designated a proscribed terrorist group.
Protesters gathered for the second week in a row in central London, where the Metropolitan Police made 42 arrests.
Other demonstrations took place around the UK, including in Manchester, where police said 16 arrests were made, in Cardiff, where South Wales Police arrested 13 people, and in Leeds, where West Yorkshire Police made one arrest.
In London, two groups of protesters gathered underneath statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square, shortly before 1pm.
They wrote the message “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” on pieces of cardboard and silently held the signs in the air as they were surrounded by police officers and members of the media.
Image: Police officers remove a person. Pic: PA
Image: Police with demonstrators in Parliament Square. Pic: PA
Some demonstrators could be seen lying on top of each other on the floor as police searched their bags, and took their ID cards and signs.
Officers then carried away a number of protesters, lifting them off the ground and into waiting police vans.
The last protester was lifted from the Nelson Mandela statue shortly after 2.30pm.
Forty-one of the 42 arrests at the London protest were for showing support for a proscribed organisation, while one person was arrested for common assault, the Met Police said.
Image: People take part in a protest in Parliament Square, London. Pic: PA
Palestine Action’s terror group designation means membership of, or support for, the group is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Greater Manchester Police said it had arrested 16 people under the Terrorism Act 2000 after responding to a protest in St Peter’s Square at around 2.30pm.
Image: Police lead a protester away in Manchester
South Wales Police confirmed 13 people were arrested on suspicion of offences under the same act in the vicinity of Central Square in Cardiff.
West Yorkshire Police said a person was arrested in Leeds on suspicion of demonstrating support for Palestine Action.
Scotland Yard has said its stance remains that officers will act where criminal offences, including support of proscribed groups or organisations, are committed.
It added that this includes “chanting, wearing clothing or displaying articles such as flags, signs or logos”.
The move to ban Palestine Action came after two aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire last month.
Police said the incident caused around £7m worth of damage.