The suspended surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge has been named as paediatric consultant Kuldeep Stohr.
Eight hundred patients operated on by Ms Stohr are having their cases urgently re-examined, after an external review found nine children whose care fell below expected standards.
The initial review was ordered after concerns were raised by her colleagues.
Sky News has seen a copy of the interim report which details several issues relating to complex hip surgeries performed by the surgeon.
One of the parents whose child was identified in the review showed us a recent letter from the hospital which reported“problems with both judgement and technique” in her child’s surgery.
Ms Stohr, who has been suspended since the end of January, said in a statement: “I always strive to provide the highest standards of care to all my patients.
“I am co-operating fully with the trust investigation and it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”
Image: Tammy Harrison: ‘It was hell’
Left in agonising pain
Tammy Harrison, 12, has cerebral palsy and had surgeries carried out by Ms Stohr. Her operations didn’t work, leaving her in agonising pain.
She said: “My first one was just like trauma. I couldn’t get out of bed for eight weeks. I was either stuck in bed or stuck on the sofa. It was hell.”
Her mum, Lynn, told Sky News: “There is nothing that can put Tammy back to where she was now and that’s the sad thing.
“If I could just click my fingers and have the child back that I had I would do it with a blink of an eye.”
Image: Ms Stohr operated on Lynn Harrison’s daughter
So far, there’s been no confirmation of any wrongdoing in Tammy’s care.
But her family have a meeting at the hospital this week to find out more.
The trust has asked a panel of specialist clinicians to review all the planned operations carried out by Ms Stohr at Addenbrooke’s. One hundred emergency trauma cases will also be looked at.
Addenbrooke’s is a major regional trauma centre and treats serious emergency patients from all over the region.
One clinician at the hospital told Sky News that the review of so many patients was “creating a lot of extra work”, which was “slowing things down” for other patients awaiting treatment.
Image: Addenbrooke’s Hospital. File pic: PA
At least one extra locum consultant has been helping the team, as they work through the caseload.
Trust apologises
Sky News has been told Cambridge University Hospitals Trust had wanted to identify Ms Stohr before but had been threatened with a legal injunction.
The trust has apologised unreservedly to families and patients. But what’s troubling many is the fact concerns were raised about Ms Stohr a decade ago.
Chief executive of Cambridge University Hospitals Trust, Roland Sinker, has set up another review to examine whether opportunities were missed, and action could have been taken sooner.
The Department of Health described the ongoing situation as “incredibly concerning.”
Merseyside Police knows – better than any force, perhaps – that in a social media age, an information vacuum can become a misinformation cauldron.
They have learnt from the aftermath of the Southport stabbing attack, where the force was criticised for being too slow to release information that could have calmed the riots that followed.
So, it feels like things have been done differently this time.
Image: Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street. Pic: PA
The incident happened just after 6pm on Monday.
Videos – captured by fans on their phones – were online within moments. Shared and speculated upon, with guesses as to the attacker’s identity and motive.
But alongside the huge and immediate police investigation, the communication machine moved equally fast.
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Within a few hours, police released a description of the man they had arrested – a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.
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Moment car drives into crowds in Liverpool
A few hours after that, we had an extensive press conference during which police ruled out terrorism as a motive.
Again, they appealed for videos not to be shared online and for people not to speculate.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said Merseyside Police “handled the situation fantastically” given how quickly footage of the incident was shared online.
He told Sky News that online misinformation can set “a lot of false narrative”.
The mayor added: “And we all know that speculation and social media are a wildfire of different vantages, and some of it is for nefarious reasons.
“So, it was right, of course, that the police reacted as quickly as they did to dampen down some of the types of posts that we were witnessing, you know, saying that there were other things happening throughout the city.”
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Police commentator Graham Wettone also told Sky News the force had done well to quickly combat misinformation spreading online.
He said: “That’s always a problem in today’s day and age, social media taking over so much news reporting, with so many people as well present at the scene where that awful incident took place, mobile phones out, people recording it, and then posting it almost straight away.”
Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent, also highlighted it was “unprecedented” that the force “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”
Mr Babu agreed that Merseyside Police appears to have learned lessons from what happened after the Southport stabbings.
He added: “The difficulty we have is in the olden days, when I was policing, you would have a conversation with trusty journalists, print journalists, radio journalists, broadcasting journalists, you’d have a conversation and say look can you please hold fire on sharing this information and people would listen.
“We don’t have that with social media, it’s like the Wild West and anything goes and so puts the police in a very, very difficult position.”
Meanwhile, the police investigation continues.
In central Liverpool, Water Street is cordoned off with police officers and vehicles in place.
Flags, sprays of paint flares and empty bottles still cover the road. Whereas they have been cleared elsewhere along the parade route, here they remain. Chilling symbols of the party, that within moments became a scene of utter horror.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are being urged to use their visit to Canada to seek an apology for the abuse of British children.
Campaigners have called on them to pursue an apology for the “dire circumstances” suffered by so-called “Home Children” over decades.
More than 100,000 were shipped from orphan homes in the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948 with many used as cheap labour, typically as farm workers and domestic servants. Many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.
Canada has resisted calls to follow the UK and Australia in apologising for its involvement in child migrant schemes.
Image: King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA
Campaigners for the Home Children say the royal visit presents a “great opportunity” for a change of heart.
“I would ask that King Charles uses his trip to request an apology,” John Jefkins told Sky News.
John’s father Bert was one of 115,000 British Home Children transported to Canada, arriving in 1914 with his brother Reggie.
“It’s really important for the Home Children themselves and for their descendants,” John said.
“It’s something we deserve and it’s really important for the healing process, as well as building awareness of the experience of the Home Children.
“They were treated very, very badly by the Canadian government at the time. A lot of them were abused, they were treated horribly. They were second-class citizens, lepers in a way.”
John added: “I think the King’s visit provides a great opportunity to reinforce our campaign and to pursue an apology because we’re part of the Commonwealth and King Charles is a new Head of the Commonwealth meeting a new Canadian prime minister. It’s a chance, for both, to look at the situation with a fresh eye.
“There’s much about this visit that looks on our sovereignty and who we are as Canadians, rightly so.
“I think it’s also right that in contemplating the country we built, we focus on the people who built it, many in the most trying of circumstances.”
The issue was addressed by the then Prince of Wales during a tour of Canada in May 2022. He said at the time: “We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.”
On Tuesday, the King will deliver the Speech from the Throne to open the 45th session of Canada’s parliament.
Camilla was made Patron of Barnardo’s in 2016. The organisation sent tens of thousands of Home Children to Canada. She took on the role, having served as president since 2007.
Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.
A spokesperson for the Canadian government said: “The government of Canada is committed to keeping the memory of the British Home Children alive.
“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada deeply regrets this unjust and discriminatory policy, which was in place from 1869 to 1948. Such an approach would have no place in modern Canada, and we must learn from past mistakes.”
The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017.
Ms Phillipson’s comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped.
Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children.
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However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a “really difficult situation” with public finances from the Conservative government.
“These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes,” she added.
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Why did Labour delay their child poverty strategy?
The education secretary, who is also head of the government’s child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs.
She said it is “the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life”.
Her “personal mission” is to tackle child poverty, she said.
Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday.
The government’s child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.
Whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap is one of the main issues it is looking at.