Ex-police chief: Put drug-death ‘Doctor Opiate’ in the dock

A DOCTOR accused of presiding over the premature deaths of hundreds of elderly hospital patients should be prosecuted, according to a former senior police officer who investigated her.

An inquiry found that at least 450 people died prematurely at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, where Dr Jane Barton was said to have prescribed powerful painkillers they did not need.

Steve Watts, who was Assistant Chief Constable of Hampshire, said it was a ‘big mistake’ for her not to have faced criminal charges after his 2002 inquiry into 92 deaths.

He tells BBC1’s Panorama programme tonight that the evidence against Dr Barton, nicknamed Dr Opiate, was ‘strong enough’ to be heard in court. ‘It was strong enough then and I think there was an overriding public interest in… doing so,’ he says.

Describing his feelings about the case at the time, he adds: ‘This will end up in a public inquiry and eventually… will go before a court.’ Dr Accusations: Dr Jane Barton Barton, a GP, worked as a clinical assistant at the Hampshire hospital for 12 years until 2000. Over the past two decades, there have been several police and NHS inquiries into the case, plus an independent report by an academic.

Victims’ families are waiting to see if the latest police investigation, led by Assistant Chief Constable Nick Downing, head of serious crime at Kent and Essex police, will result in a prosecution. He is to report his findings this spring.

Marjorie Bulbeck, 76, who tried to move her mother Dulcie Middleton, 86, to another hospital before she died in 2001, said: ‘This is one of the biggest NHS scandals this country has ever seen and yet we are still waiting for someone to take action. It is a total disgrace.’

The 2002 investigation ended with the Crown Prosecution Service deciding four years later that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

Last year a government inquiry, led by James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool, found that Dr Barton, now 70 and retired, had overseen a regime in which painkillers were inappropriately administered, leading to at least 450 premature deaths.

Another 200 were ‘ probably’ given opioids between 1989 and 2000 without medical justification, the panel said.

Dr Barton has never spoken about her time at the hospital. Last year she stood mutely beside her husband Tim at their £700,000 home in Gosport as he read a statement in which she described herself as a ‘hard-working doctor doing her best for her patients’.

Yesterday Mr Barton, a retired Navy commodore, answered the front door and refused to comment. Panorama’s Killed in Hospital is on BBC1 tonight at 8.30pm.