Hague demands answers on Neale
02/08/2002

FORMER Tory leader William Hague is demanding answers from the NHS hospital which gave struck-off surgeon Richard Neale another chance.

The Richmond MP wants to know how official NHS warnings about the former gynaecologist at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton, were ignored by the South Manchester University Hospital Trust.

He also wants to know who gave Mr Neale the references he needed to get a job in the clinical audit department of the trust.

The clamour for more details how a surgeon struck off in 2000 for botching operations could be given a job supervising other doctors grew louder last night.

There were also calls for changes in the law after the Department of Health admitted it was powerless to stop individual NHS trusts employing people, even if they were on an internal blacklist.

While Mr Neale is forbidden from working as a doctor, after being struck off for the second time in his life, there are no other restrictions on his employment.

The Manchester trust has admitted that he was employed on a temporary contract from August 2001 until April this year as an administrator in the clinical audit department.

The Department of Health said that a warning note about Mr Neale's unsuitability as an employee would have been circulated after he was struck off by the General Medical Council.

Mr Hague, whose North Yorkshire constituency includes the Friarage Hospital, said: "This is almost beyond belief.

"It leaves us all incredulous that the checks on Neale's background could be so poor. We will all want to know how this could happen and what references were taken."

Anne Alexander, a partner in Manchester law firm Alexander Harris, which will represent Mr Neale's victims at the forthcoming independent inquiry into the Neale scandal, said she would call for the rules governing the employment of struck-off doctors by NHS hospitals to be re-examined.

Although the Manchester trust says it has taken "appropriate disciplinary action" after an investigation, its chairman, Professor David Harnden, has declined to answer questions from the media.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Even if someone has been seriously damaging patients, if a trust decides to employ that person in a non-clinical capacity it is legally very difficult for us to stop them."

* The legal figure who will chair the Neale inquiry has been named as circuit judge Susan Mathews QC.