Peter Connelly

The chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital should resign over an attempt to “cover-up” child safeguarding failures at the clinic where Baby P was last seen alive, said Lynne Featherstone, Hornsey and Wood Green MP.

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Dr Jane Collins edited out “vital” criticisms of the management and child protection practices at St Ann’s Hospital in South Tottenham from a report handed to investigators examining the tot’s death.

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) provided the consultants and clinical staff at the child development centre in the hospital, where their consultant, Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, was the last medical professional to see him alive, two days before his death in August 2007.

But findings in GOSH’s 51-page report that it was a “clinically risky situation” there were omitted from Dr Collins’ summary, which was submitted to the first serious case review into Peter Connelly’s death.

The full 51-page document was finally released last month following a Freedom of Information request, its independent authors saying the child protection arrangements at St Ann’s “cause grave concern” with a lack of consultants and poor communications with GOSH and North Middlesex Hospital.

Dr Al-Zayyat was hired despite being underqualified for the post and received inadequate support, its says. Ms Featherstone said GOSH should have raised any concerns about the operation with Haringey Primary Care Trust, which ran the service.

Ms Featherstone, who has asked the Care Quality Commission, the chair of GOSH’s board of trustees and the Secretaries of State for Health and Education to review Dr Collins’ actions, said the report provided “clear evidence that information was withheld” and it “appears there was an attempt to cover-up the fact the situation was ‘clinically risky’”.

She said the roles of those in charge at GOSH, and their culpability, “have never faced proper scrutiny”, adding: “This can be nothing other than a deliberate attempt to hide the management failings, and subvert the serious case review process.

“It is not possible to learn the right lessons unless all relevant and important information has been disclosed, whatever the potential impact on the hospitals and health trusts involved.”

But Baroness Tessa Blackstone, chair of the GOSH board of trustees, said it “did not accept” the MP’s views and has “complete confidence in Dr Collins”, adding: “As a board, we have confidence that the trust has never sought to mislead any inquiry into the death of a child.”

Ruth Carnall, chief executive of NHS London, the overarching body for primary care, also defended Dr Collins, saying she “continues to have our absolute full support”.