Don’t let unhealthy secrets risk more lives

LAST September, Westminster Health Secretary Matt Hancock delivered a speech warning health chiefs not to shroud scandals in secrecy. Patient safety, he said, relied on ‘transparency and accountability’.

It was a well-trodden theme. Four years earlier, in the fallout from the inquiry into needless hospital deaths at Mid-Staffs, his predecessor Jeremy Hunt promised to call time on the ‘cover-up culture’.

Unfortunately, it seems the exhortations fell on deaf ears.

Three weeks ago, health chiefs were alerted to an outbreak of food poisoning after patients ate sandwiches contaminated with the deadly listeria bug.

Yet it wasn’t until last Friday that officials revealed three patients had died in hospital. Yesterday, they grudgingly admitted two more had lost their lives.

Troublingly, health bosses have refused to disclose key details: The victims’ names, ages, gender and exactly what they’d eaten.

Surely millions who entrust the NHS with their lives deserve answers? Disgracefully, NHS chiefs are hiding behind the tired old excuses of privacy and human rights.

But while questions of how this tragedy was allowed to happen are ignored, more people remain at risk. If secrecy is creeping back, especially in matters of profound public interest, it is deeply worrying.

The health service is not known for its willingness to admit mistakes. But this time it must come clean.

Only by shining the disinfectant of sunlight on blunders and wrong-doing can we ensure these scandals never happen again.