Mental Health Trust : Dead Policeman : The BBC Use The FOI Act

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Tennyson Obih Aged 29

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uploaded by Art de Rivers

 By Art De Rivers

The case of Tennyson Obih,  a mental health patient of the Bedfordshire and Luton Mental Health Trust,   who stabbed PC John Henry in Luton in 2007,   has been pursued by BBC Three Counties Radio using the Freedom Of Information Act .

This is to be congratulated because perhaps more journalists will now see the value in pursuing these cases to investigate NHS Mental Health Trust failings fully  . Homicides are arguably avoidable. Care is possible when resources are given over to vulnerable patients fully .

A question arises too of whether the Trust is chargeable with any form of neglect .

The Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007 provides for a duty of care on vulnerable people and gets triggered when senior management fail a vulnerable person who dies,  but it does not seem to cover the eventuality or create a legal solution when a vulnerable person who is not receiving proper care kills another person . Risk is highly forseeable in cases like Tennyson Obih who suffered from patterns of paranoia and risk is increased where a man's medication is not being checked properly either .

"An organisation is guilty of the new offence if the way in which its activities are managed or organised causes a death and this amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care to the deceased. A substantial part of the breach must have been in the way activities were managed by senior management."

BBC leads :

What has been noticeable to mental health  NHS Trust watchers  is the way enquiries go on and on and emerge at best sometimes only several years later .

BBC Three Counties Radio though have only had some limited information given to them because the BBC report shows they are appealing the Bedfordshire and Luton Trust's witholding of some of the material . 

This is one case  to watch therefore,  because "patient confidentiality" is perhaps too often being used to suffocate fuller public transparency into killings by patients in the public domain .

Does Tennyson Obih deserve confidentiality ? Absolutely . But the Trust deserves none at all  in its system dealings with his case,  and staff in the case can be given other names in opened up  reports.