We know that some ALERT members wrote to Peers asking them to support Baroness Knight's amendment 10 to the Mental Health Bill, which would have guaranteed that food and fluid were given to helpless peple in hospital. Thank you.

There was an excellent debate in the House of Lords on 15th January, with support for Baroness Knight from both sides of the House. Even the Government spokesman, Lord Hunt, appeared sympathetic, although he also endorsed the dangerous clauses in the Mental Capacity Act, which is due to come into effect in April, as he was bound to do.

The Amendment was withdrawn, but that will not be the end of the matter.

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The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)

January 9, 2007 Tuesday

David Sapsted

A PENSIONER who, according to her family, starved to death in hospital, pleaded for food and a cup of tea in the days leading up to her death, an inquest heard yesterday.

Olive Nockels, 91, a great-grandmother, begged her family for beetroot sandwiches, macaroni cheese and a cup of tea, the inquest in Norwich was told.

But doctors and nurses from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital insisted that no such request had been passed on to them.

Before her death in October, 2003, Mrs Nockels, a retired school matron, had become the subject of a High Court action after she went four days without food or fluids after hospital staff withdrew them against the family's will.

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Story from BBC News. Read the original article here.

Questions have been raised after claims that a hospital consultant told an inquest patients were dying "all the time" of dehydration.

The inquest has been looking into the death of Olive Nockels, 91, who died after being admitted to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after a fall in 2003.

The barrister for Mrs Nockels' family, Christopher McNicholas, told BBC Look East that consultant Dr David Maisey said patients died of dehydration about two to three times a week.

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