The Supreme Court has removed reporting restriction orders that prevented the identities of clinicians and other hospital staff in two end-of-life cases from being revealed. 

Britain’s Supreme Court in London has removed reporting restriction orders which didn’t allow the identities of clinicians and other hospital staff in two end-of-life cases to be revealed. 

In the two cases, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust separately declared that it was in the relevant child’s best interests that life-sustaining treatment should be withdrawn. 

Rashid and Aliya Abbasi, the respondents in the first appeal, are the parents of Zainab who was six years old when she died on 16 September 2019 of a neurodegenerative condition. Lanre Haastrup and Takesha Thomas, the respondents in the second appeal, are the parents of Isaiah who died on 7 March 2018 after being deprived of oxygen at birth following an emergency caesarean.

The parents appealed against the orders which allowed the continuation of the injunctions, on the basis that they now have the effect of preventing the parents from meaningfully discussing or writing publicly about the circumstances in which their respective children were treated and died, or mainstream media from doing so if the parents were to spark interest in the circumstances of the cases.

The trusts resisted the parents’ applications, on the primary ground that making public the names of the treating clinicians would create an unacceptable risk of an invasion of their rights to private life, by exposing them to harassment and abuse from the media and the public.

A disappointing decision

In his ruling, the president of the supreme court, Lord Reed, said that “the need for any restrictions [of freedom of expression] must be established convincingly” and that injunctions should be of limited duration. 

After the child has died, these powers can no longer be exercised such that if the injunction is to be continued, it must be on some other basis, he ruled. 

“The parents’ publication of their concerns would contribute to a debate of general interest, and the hospital staff concerned were… public figures vested with official functions, and the limits of acceptable criticism were accordingly wider than in the case of private individuals,” he concluded. 

Rob Tobin, partner at Kennedys in Cambridge, highlighted that the ruling “represents a limit to the protections available to clinicians following serious medical treatment proceedings” and called the conclusions “disappointing”. 

“To expect clinicians themselves to make applications to assert their rights to privacy beyond the life of a case, even if practically and financially supported by their employer Trust, is a disappointing outcome for those dedicated and caring individuals,” he said. 

The names of the clinicians involved have not yet been released.