GAGGING orders endangering patients may be illegal under the Public Information Disclosure Act.

If not, they should constitute a serious offence vis-à-vis all participants, alongside the failure of anyone within – and arguably without – the NHS to report significant negligence and misconduct.

People naturally become blasé and resign and, fearing reprisals, place self and family first.

I wonder how they can live with themselves, as one senior employee recently could not, regardless of the ultimate unlikelihood of civil action in his high-profile case.

As a recipient of such atrocities (and admittedly rightly or wrongly, considering largely I had little of value left to lose), I felt a compulsion to speak out and eventually initiate supposedly ground-breaking litigation – for all the good it did, given the recent exposure, 25 years on, particularly in The Times, of the ongoing benzodiazepine mega-scandal.

Indeed, the obscenely thwarted lawsuits were maybe counter-productive as some culprits doubtless now deem themselves unassailable.

However, we campaigners and plaintiffs can perhaps console ourselves with the possibility that current victims would otherwise number even more than a million or so.

I would further propose that greater attention should be paid to various abominations in the psychiatric sector, which still boasts a high percentage of especially vulnerable hospitalised patients.

Many of their admissions are largely iatrogenic, not least as some relevant doctors and nurses are “madder” than many receiving treatment.

Anyway, we should let long-overdue prosecutions for crimes up to manslaughter be swiftly forthcoming at all levels, not least as a deterrent.

DAVID DIMENT
Riverside Court
Oxford