NEWMAN’S
VIEW
May 29, 2022 · Issue no 10,316 · thesundaytimes.co.uk £3 · only £2 to subscribers (based on 7 day Print Pack)
Sunday newspaper of the year
HOW TO SAVE THE FIRM
BY TINA BROWN
KIRSTY YOUNG
‘WHY I REALLY QUIT
DESERT ISLAND DISCS’
An ambulance trust has been
accused of acting like a “criminal
gang” and lying to dead patients’
families by an employee who
repeatedly warned about para-
medics’ mistakes being covered
up.
Paul Calvert, a coroner’s officer
whose job was to produce reports
on deaths, tried to raise concerns
about managers at the North East
Ambulance Service (NEAS) for
three years before walking out last
year on the verge of a breakdown.
“My life was being made a mis-
ery,” said Calvert, who was previ-
ously a detective with Northum-
bria police. “They were basically
like a criminal gang. I had tried
everything I could to warn the
proper authorities about how the
service was destroying and con-
cealing evidence meant for the cor-oner. I spoke to my managers, to
human resources, to external audi-
tors. I even made disclosures to the
Care Quality Commission and
Northumbria police. Nothing was
done about it.”
Despite their denials of a large-
scale cover-up of mistakes, the
NEAS this year offered Calvert
£41,000 as part of a non-disclosure
agreement it asked him to sign.
One of the clauses meant destroy-
ing all the evidence he had col-lected. Another tried to stop him
making any further disclosures to
police.
Since early 2019, Calvert was
one of several coroner’s officers at
the service who warned managers
of a significant cover-up of evi-
dence.
Reports and witness statements
from ambulance staff were not
being disclosed to the coroner “on
a daily basis”, according to Calvert,
amounting to key pieces of evi-dence relating to deaths being hid-
den from the public.
In one case he saw how a con-
sultant paramedic had changed
evidence to erase vital information
about the death by hanging of
Quinn Evie Beadle, 17, in 2018. The
NEAS investigation report was
altered to remove the fact that her
heart was beating when the first
paramedic at the scene decided not
to perform CPR. The error was hid-
den from the coroner and family.NHS managers within the ser-
vice set up a group in 2019 called
Seacare that was supposed to
make more efficient and timely
the process of disclosing docu-
ments to the coroner via the ser-
vice’s team of coroner’s officers.
The coroner would use such evi-
dence to determine whether an
inquest should take place.
But Calvert claims that Seacare
was simply used to sift out “incon-
venient facts” about blundersbefore they got into the public
domain.
Calvert claims he saw paramed-
ics and others bullied into chang-
ing witness statements to protect
the NEAS’s reputation and prevent
families from complaining. In
Quinn’s case, he says a consultant
paramedic altered evidence and
believes her family were purposely
kept in the dark about mistakes.
He threatened managers that heAmbulance trust covered up paramedics’ fatal errors like a ‘criminal gang’
Continued on page 4→David Collins and
Hannah Al-Othman
MAGAZINEMAGAZ
Downing Street figures lobbied Sue
Gray to dilute her report on the
parties scandal and anonymise
some of the key players.
On the eve of Wednesday’s pub-
lication, three civil servants tried
to persuade her not to identify
some of the partygoers at illicit
gatherings in No 10 and elsewhere
in Whitehall.
Simon Case, the cabinet secre-
tary, Samantha Jones, the perma-
nent secretary at No 10, and Alex
Chisholm, the permanent secre-
tary to the Cabinet Office and chief
operating officer for the civil ser-
vice, are understood to have
pressed Gray to water down her
conclusions.
Sources said that Case’s name
was among those they wanted to
remove. Other changes were
requested to sections of the report
that referred to the prime minis-
ter’s wife, Carrie.
It is understood that up to 30
people were contacted by Gray
before publication and told that
she intended to name them. She
sent them extracts and they were
given until 5pm last Sunday to
complain as part of the Maxwellisa-
tion process, which allows people
who are to be criticised in an offi-
cial report the right to respond.
Caroline Wheeler, Tim Shipman
and Harry Yorke
Police use
pepper
spray on
British fans
French police fired pepper spray
at football fans last night amid
chaotic scenes outside the Paris
stadium where Liverpool were
playing Real Madrid in the Champi-
ons League final, forcing a 37-min-
ute delay to the start of the game.
Huge crowds formed outside
the Stade de France stadium on the
northeast outskirts of Paris, where
the match, which Real Madrid
went on to win 1-0, was due to
begin at 8pm UK time. But the
queues moved slowly and some
entrance gates were blocked off.
Some fans were met with pep-
per spray as they tried to enter,
while a small number ran through
the gates as security watched help-
lessly. Footage posted on social
media showed fans climbing over
fences and running up the steps to
the seating areas, with no attempt
to stop them.
Adding to the chaos, there were
reports of fans having their tickets
stolen, apparently by youths from
the area around the stadium,
which is in Seine-Saint-Denis, one
of the poorest areas in France.
Some 25 minutes before the
match was due to start, policePeter Conradi ParisGray ‘diluted
parties report’
after pressure
The Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards, struggles with his bearskin at the Colonel’s Review
at Horse Guards Parade, a rehearsal for Thursday’s Trooping the Colour Queen to miss Derby, page 3UNBEARABLE ITCH, WILLIAM?
emails, the entire machine fought
her.”
She resisted some of the most
egregious interference, insisting
that civil servants would have to
formally instruct her to make the
changes — a process requiring a
minister to sign them off.
The move would have signalled
to Westminster and the wider pub-
lic that revisions had been made
against Gray’s wishes.
The damning final report laid
bare a culture of rule-breaking,
including gatherings where drunk
Downing Street officials vomited,
sang karaoke, became involved in
altercations and abused security
and cleaning staff at a time when
the entire population was banned
from seeing friends and family.
After the long-awaited report
was published last week, Boris
Johnson said he took “full respon-
sibility” for the Downing Street cul-
ture, but refused to resign.
News that Gray was placed
under pressure by civil servants
and eventually agreed to amend
her report will trigger fresh accusa-
tions of a cover-up.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy
leader and shadow chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “The
prime minister must explain why
changes to the report were subse-
quently made after he and several
Continued on page 2→JUSTIN GOFF/GOFFPHOTOSContinued on page 2→In the end, half that number
were named. Key omissions
included Hannah Young, a No 10
private secretary whose leaving
party was one of the most raucous
events and ended in a brawl
between two members of staff.
According to sources who saw
the draft report before it was pub-
lished, changes to the text were
also made, including details of an
alleged “Abba night” party in the
prime minister’s flat on November
13, 2020.
A ministerial adviser said: “After
Sue made clear that she wanted to
print WhatsApp messages andDowning Street mandarins demanded that
the names of rule-breakers be removed
y(7HA9F6*LNSTRN( |||+$!='
INDEX
This week News 2
Weather News 27
Letters News 24
Sudoku News 26
TV & Radio Culture 29