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PETITION
Bamburac Family
10.6 pm
Mr. Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend): I wish to present a petition on behalf of the friends and supporters of the Bamburac family. It asks the House to ask the Home Secretary to allow the family to stay in Britain, and not to deport them to Croatia. Mr. Bamburac is of Serbian ancestry.
The petition has attracted 1,411 signatures in just over a week. Most of the petitioners are my constituents—friends and neighbours of the Bamburac family. That is clear evidence that the family have settled into the life of our community in Newcastle. They have lived in Newcastle for the past five years; their daughter Sabrina is now 10, and has learnt English with an endearing Geordie accent, made friends, and settled into school. It is Sabrina who makes this case so special. She is an unusually gifted tennis player, with a talent acknowledged in public, nationally, by the Lawn Tennis Association. Her human rights, enabling her to develop that talent in the country that she has made her home, would be cruelly infringed if the family were deported.
Prison Medical Services
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
10.8 pm
Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North): I am grateful to have this opportunity to raise issues about prison medical services, although I very much regret the circumstances that gave rise to this debate as I had hoped that the issues could be resolved in correspondence with the Home Office and the prison medical service. However, my constituent, Mr. John Tero, whose case I want to raise, is very seriously ill from the cancer that first developed and was untreated while he was in Woodhill prison. An ombudsman's inquiry takes time and, as my constituent says, time is not on his side. In fact, only this evening, he came out of hospital after another acute spell of illness.
I have some general questions about the working of the prison medical service but, more important, I want two specific things for Mr. Tero. The first is the payment of the £45 compensation that he was promised, and the second is an apology for the way in which he has been treated. I emphasise that Mr. Tero is innocent. He was convicted at the end of 2000, but at his appeal in December 2001, the conviction was found to be unsafe and the charges against him were dismissed. By then, however, it was too late for him.
Before Mr. Tero went into Woodhill, he developed a problem with his prostate gland and arrangements had been made for him to have an operation, which was duly carried out in May. He was discharged from hospital after three days and returned to Woodhill where he was put into an ordinary cell. He was then put into the medical wing for a couple of hours, but later—he estimates that it was about 11.30 at night—he was returned to the ordinary cell where he remained, despite suffering a severe haemorrhage some days later. He was given no help to clear that up, nor was he taken to the medical wing.
I am astonished at the way that my constituent was treated. Is it standard practice for prisoners who are discharged from hospital after surgery to be returned to an ordinary cell? In the interests of the Prison Service, I would have thought that prisoners in such circumstances would be kept under some degree of medical observation and I consider that what happened to him was excessively cruel.
It was after that, however, that Mr. Tero's problems really developed. He complained to the prison medical staff that he could not keep food down; he could not swallow and he could not eat. He was given indigestion tablets. He complained several times, but got nothing more than indigestion tablets.
Mr. Tero started to lose weight. He showed me the belt that he had worn in prison and I could see the notches where he had had to tighten the belt to stop his trousers from falling down during the months when he became more ill and steadily lost more weight. In late October, he was transferred to Wymott prison although he said that he felt too ill to be moved. At that stage, he could eat only soup and biscuits. He said that the staff at Wymott treated him better. He continued to complain that he was unable to eat, and was eventually—I believe on 12 December—admitted to Preston hospital for a day for tests, which found he had a tumour on the gullet.
In December when Mr. Tero's appeal came up in London, he was too ill to attend. He was released from prison shortly afterwards on 19 December.
On 9 January 2002, he was admitted to Northampton general hospital and was found to be suffering from cancer. He underwent radiotherapy and, several months later, surgery. However, this year the cancer came back, and he is now very seriously ill.
I have spoken to Mr. Tero's consultant who said that the particular cancer from which he suffered was a fast developing one, and early intervention was essential. He also said that the early warning of Mr. Tero's difficulty in swallowing should have alerted medical staff to the possibility of a serious problem.
Mr. Tero first came to me for help last November; he had a strong sense of injustice, and simply wanted an apology. However, what has happened since then has made things worse for him, not better. Over the past few months, we have been in correspondence with the Home Office, the Prison Service, the prison health policy unit and the Prison Service ombudsman, but we have not got much further.
First, there was a dispute about the clothes that Mr. Tero wore to hospital when he had his prostate operation. He said that they had been lost. The Home Office, in a letter from the predecessor of my hon. Friend the Minister, denied that. When Mr. Tero produced the copy of his lost property form, the Home Office conceded the point and agreed to pay him £45 compensation. Five months later, the compensation has still not been paid.
More important, there have been different stories about Mr. Tero's care and they raise more questions than they answer. Mr. Tero says that he complained of being sick, of not being able to eat, of not being able to swallow, and of losing weight. Indeed, he weighed only 66 kg when he arrived back in Northampton. The Prison Service said, through a letter from my hon. Friend's predecessor, that Mr. Tero's weight was stable. A second letter from the Prison Service stated that he had actually put on weight and weighed 77.8 kg on 4 October. How exactly did his weight go down from 77.8 kg on 4 October to 66 kg on 9 January?
It is claimed that Mr. Tero's only complaint was one of gastric reflux, despite the fact he made seven visits, as recorded by the Prison Service, to the doctor at Woodhill between 5 June and 4 October. There is no recognition by the prison medical service that he was unable to eat. Mr. Tero told me he had pretty much stopped eating completely by about August or September and that he ate only soup and biscuits when he was transferred. He also said that a prison officer at Wymott tried to get him special food that he could eat.
The Prison Service says that health care staff at Wymott were unaware that Mr. Tero no longer wished to attend his appeal, whereas my constituent said that he spoke to prison staff, that he had collapsed at least once by that stage and that the prison officer that he consulted agreed that he could not travel and sorted out some of the appeal arrangements for him.
In trying to pursue this matter, there has also been some dispute about whether the Prison Service ombudsman can deal with it, or whether it is down to the
prison health care policy unit. In the middle of all that, there is a desperately ill man who has a complaint—in my view, wholly justified—about the way in which he was treated. I have to say that, apart from my concerns about his treatment, the difficulty that I have had in getting a resolution also raises real concerns about the way that the prison medical services work. I therefore want to ask a number of questions not just about my constituent, but about the general policy.First, on the general policy, about which I have asked questions previously, what are the procedures for prisoners who have been discharged from hospital? Should they be kept in a prison medical facility, or just put in an ordinary cell? What are the procedures for examining prisoners and recording their complaints? In particular, if they complain of eating difficulties, are they weighed or is their eating monitored in any way? Given that prisoners sometimes go on hunger strike, I should have thought that procedures would be in place to deal with those issues.
How long does a prisoner's consultation last with a prison doctor? What notes are kept of those consultations? What access do prisoners have to their medical files? What liaison takes place between the prison's medical staff and the rest of the prison staff? It appears, from what Mr. Tero said, that some of the prison staff were aware of his condition and tried to help him, but that did not seem to have been relayed back to the medical staff. For example, I understand that Mr. Tero collapsed on at least one occasion and that he was unable to get up on at least one occasion. On several occasions, other inmates did some of his tasks for him; he was simply unable to do them because of his poor state.
Would not it be normal in any institution for such events to have been noted and passed to the medical staff to deal with? Why are there no clear lines of accountability, so that the prison medical services can be properly held to account, instead of inquiries being batted between the prison ombudsman and the health care policy unit, as well as the Home Office and the Prison Service?
Secondly and most importantly, on behalf of my constituent, I want an apology. What has shocked me most in all this is that my constituent has had no apology and no recognition of the hardship that he has experienced. Having dealt with him for a number of months, I know that his hardship has been immense. I have watched while his health has declined and he has been completely unsupported and not helped by the Prison Service. By any account, he had a horrendous time and regained his liberty only to lose his health. Of course, it will always be debatable whether proper and timely intervention could have made a difference to the ultimate medical outcome, but he could at least have been spared the indignity and suffering that he has had to endure.
Public services must ensure that they respect people's humanity and, whether they are prison services or whatever, ensure that they treat people with the dignity that is their due. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could look at the bare facts of the case and fail to realise that they were dealing with a vulnerable, very sick, elderly and innocent man and that steps had to be taken to make amends.
What my constituent most wants is an apology, which will make a big difference to him in the time that he has left and end his burning sense of injustice about the way he was treated. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will ensure that the £45 compensation that is outstanding—it is not very much—is paid very promptly, acknowledge that Mr. Tero was not properly treated and offer the apology that my constituent deserves.
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