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UK: Report slams Ashworth

01 September 1992

Patients at Britain's largest special hospital, Ashworth in Manchester, may well have been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. This is the finding of the year-long inquiry by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC.

The Ashworth inquiry was set up after a Channel 4 documentary in March 1991 exposed physical ill-treatment at the 650-bed hospital. It received numerous complaints of bullying by "mini- Hitlers" from patients and their relatives. The complaints included allegations that British National Party material was displayed and that black patients were particularly victimised.
Despite expenditure of £65,000 per patient per year, the report concluded that its regime is "brutalising, stagnant and oppressive". It suggested that the hospital should be visited by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The report's publication on 5 August led to the immediate replacement of its general manager and the suspension of seven named nursing staff for alleged gross professional misconduct including bullying, brutality, threats and cover-ups. The staff were all members of the Prison Officers Association (POA), which has consistently refused to co-operate with internal inquiries
The POA had been on an overtime ban for a month after two staff who terrorised patients with a pig's head were sacked. After the report's publication it called off the ban, while complaining of a "media campaign waged by those with a vested interest in attacking the POA".

In the longer term the report may lead to the closure of the country's three large special hospitals, Ashworth, Broadmoor and Rampton. In these places seriously deranged prisoners rub shoulders with harmless long-term schizophrenics when patients should be in smaller, more therapeutic and less security-obsessed hospitals.

The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Complaints about Ashworth Hospital, HMSO, Cmnd 2028-1 and 2028-2, 1992.