Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence


APPENDIX 111

Memorandum submitted by Mrs D

INQUIRY INTO PRIVACY AND MEDIA INTRUSION

  I have received a letter from the Press Complaints Committee inviting me to comment on how their system works.

  I made a complaint to the PCC on behalf of the Eastern Leicester Primary Care Trust, where I work. This was following an article in a national newspaper that implied anti-allergy bedding was available free for asthma patients depending upon which area you lived in. A patient in our PCT catchment area had enquired as to when he would be able to obtain this bedding.

  The patient contacted us about a month after the article had been published, and I contacted the editor asking him to supply details of the PCT involved in the article. I waited about four weeks, and when he hadn't replied I contacted the PCC.

  They initially said that the complaint would not be investigated as it was outside their time-scale, but when I explained that the editor's lack of response had contributed to the delay, they agreed to contact him on my behalf.

  The PCC managed to establish that the bedding had been given out as part of an Industry sponsored trial, and therefore was not given out by the NHS. I was grateful that the PCC had managed to get an answer to my query, but I was disappointed, however, that it was decided it was too late to print a correction to the article, as I feel that the sort of headline used in this article only contributes to the negative public image of the NHS that the media seems to encourage.

  Overall, however, I did find the PCC helpful and their complaints system was easy to access.

23 January 2003


 
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