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Dr. David Southall

On 20 February 2007 the then Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, announced a review of criminal cases in which Dr. David Southall had been a prosecution witness. The General Medical Council (GMC) had started a hearing to examine allegations that Dr. Southall had kept so-called ““Special Case”” (SC) files containing original medical records relating to his patients that were not also kept on the child's official hospital file. These files relate to the period 1980 to 2000. Concerns had been expressed that in some of those cases criminal proceedings may have been brought but the existence of the files not revealed, resulting in their not being available for disclosure as part of the prosecution process. It was not clear at that stage whether or not there had been any such failures to discharge disclosure obligations. Lord Goldsmith decided to assess cases in which Dr. Southall had been instructed as a prosecution witness to determine whether he had kept a separate SC file; and if so to determine what further review might be required. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) undertook that assessment, establishing a Project Board and a Review Team under the leadership of a Chief Crown Prosecutor. The Review Team"Identified criminal prosecutions to which individual SC files could be linked;""Retrieved original prosecution files;""Reviewed the SC files against the contents of the associated prosecution files to assess whether there were any grounds for concern as to whether the obligations of disclosure to the defence had been fully discharged; and""Reported their findings to the Attorney-General." Dr. Southall provided all the SC files he held—a total of 4,344 files—in accordance with his undertaking to the GMC. Of the 4,344 SC files reviewed by the Team 82 were found to be linked to court proceedings of some kind. Of those, 40 were established to have been associated with a criminal prosecution conducted in this jurisdiction. The Review Team then checked CPS records against these 40 SC files and identified a total of seven CPS prosecution files linked with a total of nine SC files. On reviewing these files in depth, the team found no grounds to suggest that there had been a failure to comply with the prosecution's obligations of disclosure to the defence. Accordingly the Review Team has advised, and the Attorney-General and I accept, that there is no reason to indicate that any of these cases needs to be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The ability of the Review Team to identify whether an SC file was linked with a prosecution, and then to locate the original prosecution papers, was constrained by a number of wholly practical factors. The team had to rely on the contents of the SC file for information suggesting that there may be linked criminal proceedings. In some older cases where there was such a link, the prosecution file no longer existed because of the application of the normal procedures for file destruction within the CPS after set periods of time. Differences between the methods of identifying SC files (which were linked to the patient) and CPS prosecution files (recorded by the name of the defendant) also made linking SC files to prosecution files difficult. Nonetheless this review has been a valuable and worthwhile exercise. The Review Team has approached its task conscientiously and with care and thoroughness, for which the Attorney-General and I thank them. The report makes a number of recommendations designed to reinforce the message that expert witnesses must fully understand their responsibilities in relation to the disclosure of information in criminal cases. These are explained in the CPS/ACPO ““Guidance Booklet for Experts””. The report's recommendations have been accepted and are being taken forward. Recommendation seven is that the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) should consider whether to conduct a similar review in relation to possible disclosure failings in family court proceedings. DCSF have now considered this recommendation—they agree that there should be such a review and that they are the appropriate department to conduct it. The review will focus on the 82 SC files which the Review Team found were linked to court proceedings of some kind. Thirty six of these were definitely linked to family proceedings. It is to be noted that if a disclosure failure were detected, this may, or may not, have any impact on the case, bearing in mind the passage of time and the fact that the welfare of the child is paramount in family proceedings. However, DCSF will follow the recommendation of the Review Team and conduct a review of the family cases. The Review Team's report and recommendations (edited to preserve the anonymity of individual patients) have today been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.