Esther backs admiral’s legal battle for free help from NHS

A COURT battle to stop people being robbed of free NHS social care has been launched by a former rear admiral and backed by Dame Esther Rantzen.

Campaigners yesterday lodged a formal High Court bid for a judicial review of a policy which has led to vulnerable patients being forced to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for care.

Cost-cutting officials may have to explain themselves, and as Health Secretary Matt Hancock was also named in legal papers he too could become involved.

NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are refusing the right to free care for people with paralysis, epilepsy, cerebral palsy and dementia among other conditions – and campaigners claim they are acting unlawfully.

Philip Mathias, a retired rear admiral once in charge of the UK’s nuclear defences, heads the nhschcscandal.co.uk campaign after fighting his local CCG for a refund of £200,000 spent on his mother’s care inWiltshire.

He said: “The injustice suffered by tens of thousands of our most vulnerable people is the biggest public scandal of modern times.”

His case accuses the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England of failing to fix the problem despite agreeing to do so after damning criticism from the Parliamentary

Public Accounts Committee.

MPs said in 2018: “Patients’ likelihood of getting [Continuing Healthcare] funding depends too much on local interpretation of assessment criteria.The Equality and Human Rights Commission is concerned that the way some CCGs are applying CHC policies may be unlawful.

“Too often assessors are inadequately trained, have never met the person they are assessing and do not involve the patient or their family in the assessment.”

Presenter Dame Esther, above, said: “It’s shocking that so many desperately ill and vulnerable people are not getting the healthcare funding they are entitled to. I fully support this campaign by Rear Admiral Mathias to rectify this injustice.”

Trish O’Gorman, NHS England’s head of CHC policy, admitted in 2019 that it might risk court action for applying the rules incorrectly.

She said: “NHS England may be open to judicial review as well as severe reputational damage.”