Gideon Amos, MP for Taunton & Wellington has sent a letter to Prime Minister, Sir Kier Starmer, in response to the Public Inquiry into the Nottingham Stabbings that saw the fatal stabbing of much loved Taunton Student, Barnaby Webber…
Dear Prime Minister,
When I challenged you at Prime Minister’s Questions on 2nd April last year on the failure of the NHS to confine or medicate the perpetrator of the Nottingham murders, whose victims included my constituent Barnaby Webber, who tragically died alongside Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates, you told me, “We need to get to the bottom of all these issues”.
The Public Inquiry, which the families bravely fought for, is now concluding and has revealed a catalogue of systemic failures which demand action from the government agencies involved. I therefore ask you:
1. To demand of the Crown Prosecution Service why the report of veteran detective Neil Beddoe, which showed that the perpetrator was “capable of complex rational thought allowing him to calculate, plan and deceive” was filed in the MG6D file concealing vital evidence about mental capacity which should have influenced the decision about whether a lesser charge of manslaughter was the correct one?
2. What action is the government taking to prevent the “repulsive voyeurism” called out by families in which NHS staff shared medical records of the of the victims for no good reason?
3. Why did the police fail to execute a warrant for the perpetrator’s arrest issued nine months before he killed and how have practices changed so that will never happen again?
4. How can we be sure another potential killer’s refusal of medication will not be tolerated or that a mentally ill patient known to be violent will not again be discharged from psychiatric services without a proper risk assessment or a face-to-face evaluation, as occurred nine months before the attacks?
5. Given that the court’s sentencing decision rested substantially on diminished responsibility, which in turn depended on the quality of the psychiatric evidence which post-sentencing reviews revealed omitted the full picture of the killer’s avoidance of treatment and medication how will you ensure such failures do not happen again?
6. What steps will you take to ensure more victim support from the CPS, particularly the right to be better consulted and informed about decisions relating to an offender’s detention, leave, or discharge?
7. Given the Attorney General’s original view that the sentence was unduly lenient and given the new evidence established by the Public Inquiry that the perpetrator’s violent history was not made known to the court, should the courts review their finding on the leniency of the sentence on the basis of this new evidence?
You told me we needed to get to the bottom of these issues. Now that the inquiry is concluding proper sanctions must be imposed on all those complicit in these failures, and the families and the public deserve to know what actions will be taken, so that ensures this never happens again, so that no one else is put through what the families of the victims have been put through and so that Barnaby, Grace and Ian are cherished and remembered always.
Yours sincerely,
Gideon Amos
MP for Taunton and Wellington
