Lampard Inquiry campaigner backs former Southend NHS manager

Retired NHS manager Robin Jamieson ran Southend’s psychology service in the 1980s and 1990s, which included Wickford’s Runwell Hospital.

He told the inquiry – investigating the high death rate among Essex mental health patients – he kept evidence from a cataclysmic row between doctors and bosses over cuts imposed right before the surplus deaths began.

In 1998, the majority of the Southend trust’s psychologists quit, alongside its medical director, amid concerns over patient safety.

The death spike under investigation by Baroness Kate Lampard began in 2000.

The mother of Southend teen Chris Nota, whose death was later attributed in part to mental health service failures, has backed Robin’s bid for special status in the inquiry.

Chris, 19, died in 2020 after being repeatedly discharged from mental health inpatient wards, despite being seriously unwell.

“By raising his concerns, Robin was effectively trying to save my son’s life, and many others,” said Chris’s mother Julia Caro Hopper.

“I’m so grateful to know someone tried – because the risks were so obvious.

“It makes me want to just fall on the floor and weep that this was all going on while we were obliviously living our little lives.

"His story is of immense value. This is powerful evidence of what was happening just before these deaths started happening.”

As district psychologist, Robin Jamieson ran Southend's psychology services - including at Runwell Hospital in Wickford - in the 1980s and 1990s. He kept a stack of paperwork detailing a bitter row over budget cuts and the likely impact on mental health patients (Image: Robin Jamieson) Robin’s core participant application was rejected because he, like many colleagues, quit the service before 2000.

But the Echo last week published an excerpt from a letter he penned, warning the “draconian cuts” to psychology, psychotherapy and art therapy would have catastrophic consequences “into the next millennium”.

“Organisational failures do not happen in a day,” Robin said. “It is highly improbable that on January 1, 2000, trained and apparently competent staff started to make wrong decisions leading to enhanced deaths of patients under their care.

“The first question that needs to be asked is what changes were taking place in the NHS and mental health services in the previous ten years.”

The inquiry said it would not publicly comment on core participant applications, but Robin could still “engage meaningfully” without becoming one.