BIRMINGHAM PRISON (DEATH) (Hansard, 2 May 1958)

§ Mr. Maurice Edelman (Coventry, North)
On 6th January this year a constituent of mine died in Birmingham Prison, and I raised the matter with the Home Office in the form of a Question on 6th February. At that time, I received what I regarded as an inadequate reply, and I am therefore taking this first opportunity of asking the Joint Under-Secretary of State to the Home Department to amplify some of the answers which he gave and perhaps to deal with one point in particular which not only concerns the individual constituent who is now dead but certainly will have reference to many other people who may be brought to trial in similar circumstances.
I would like briefly to repeat the facts of the matter which are undisputable. In the first instance, Mr. George Phipps was sentenced at Coventry on 19th December to one month's imprisonment for making a false statement in order to obtain an increase in sickness benefit. When he was received into Birmingham Prison on 19th December he was then found to be suffering from chronic heart disease. He was seen by various prison medical officers on 21st, 22nd and 23rd December and on Christmas Day for bronchial trouble. On 27th December, symptoms suggesting a deterioration in his heart condition were noticed and he was removed to the prison hospital. On 4th January, 1958, he was seen by a specialist who apparently approved the treatment which he was receiving and he died on 6th January. These facts are not in doubt.
In order to supplement the Minister's information about Mr. Phipps, perhaps I ought to add that this man had a small spastic son and two other children, and his offence—I understand the first offence that he ever committed—was to draw sickness benefit for a wife who was working. That was wrong and he was properly brought before the magistrates. This case, which has caused a great deal of concern in Coventry, is one which I feel should be more carefully investigated 814 simply because Mr. Phipps did not die of an acute heart attack.
He was a man suffering from chronic heart disease, quite clearly in a very advanced form, and, equally clearly, the circumstances in which he was sent to Birmingham Prison were such that his already deteriorated condition would probably have had a fatal result, were his condition known in advance. I am not dealing with the question of tempering justice with mercy. I am not criticising in any way the decision of the magistrates. They had, no doubt, a procession of people brought in front of them, and a number of cases which were to be judged by the rule of thumb which is used on these occasions.
It is because this man was brought to trial when he was already suffering from advanced heart disease that I want to put a few salient questions, which I have already put to the Joint Under-Secretary in the form of supplementary questions, which he said he would look into. I want to repeat these questions now, because this seems to me to be a case which is of concern not only to those occupying magisterial benches but all those who are exercised about the treatment of similar offences.
The first question is: was any medical evidence given about this man's condition when he was brought to trial? If no medical evidence was offered at all, is it suggested that the onus of offering medical evidence or of making a medical submission rested with the accused? I suggest that, in the case of Phipps, and I hope similar cases in future, in which a man's condition may be doubted, at the actual trial the accused should be invited to make a statement about the condition of his health. I am told, and perhaps the Joint Under-Secretary can correct me if I am wrong, that When Phipps was brought before the Coventry magistrates, no submission was made about his medical condition. I may be wrong about that, but that is the information I have.
If that is so, then clearly, taking the normal practice and routine of the court, it was inevitable that the condition which this man was in should have escaped attention and should only have been recognised when he was under medical examination when brought to Birmingham Prison.
815 Therefore, I want to ask the Minister, first of all, whether in the case of Phipps, medical evidence was given at his trial, and, secondly, if not, if he will consider very carefully, and perhaps give me an answer, whether in future in a magistrates' court it will become a routine measure that the accused shall be invited to make a submission about his physical condition. I believe that if that had happened in this case, the magistrate might have thought twice about sending this man to a month's imprisonment over Christmas for a first offence in these circumstances, which led, I believe, to the tragic result that we have already noted.
I raise this matter again now, not in order to engage in recriminations about the past, but in order to try to ensure that if there is any similar case in future, the accused will have the opportunity of describing his condition, and, if his condition is such as that from which George Phipps suffered, not only might the magistrates take that into account but, equally, when he is sent to prison, he will not be put to work, however light, but will be given promptly the treatment which his condition requires.

§ The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Renton)
In replying to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), I should make it clear that, under the law of our country, the only part of the sequence of events to which he has referred for which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has any responsibility is that part which accompanied and followed the reception of the late George Phipps into prison. I have, however, made inquiries of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance so that I was fully informed of the circumstances in which Phipps came to be prosecuted, and the clerk to the Coventry Justices also has been good enough to let us have some information about the proceedings in court.
I think that the hon. Gentleman does not doubt that Phipps was rightly prosecuted, in view of the offence committed. Obviously, he had to be, and I do not think any question arises on the part which the Ministry took. The hon. Gentleman will accept also, I think, that there is no duty on the prosecution to 816 start making inquiries about a person's health when prosecuting, in order that it should lay the facts before the court. Indeed, people very often would resent it if, in addition to prosecuting, the prosecution started making inquiries of a personal nature like that.
As regards the court, anything which I say must be regarded in the light of the fact that we have an independent judiciary and there is nobody in the House who is answerable for decisions of any particular court. When we criticise the decisions of magistrates, we must remember that they have no chance of replying, and that that is of the essence of the matter when we have an independent judiciary, as I am proud to say we have in this country.
As an answer to part of the case raised by the hon. Member for Coventry, North I can say that Phipps himself made representations to the magistrates. He told the magistrates that he suffered from heart disease and bronchitis, that he had worked for only four years out of the previous eight, and that he was registered as a disabled person. He told the magistrates that, so they had it in mind when deciding to send him to prison. Phipps did not call any medical evidence himself. I presume that the magistrates accepted what he told them; they certainly did not challenge it, and neither did anyone else. One generally takes it, when statements are made in court and not challenged, that they are accepted by the court. So we have it that the magistrates, with that knowledge, decided to send Phipps to prison.
The facts about what happened to him when he was received in prison—here I enter the part of the case in which my right hon. Friend's responsibility, through the Prison Commissioners, is engaged—are not really disputed. The hon. Gentleman himself referred to the salient ones. Perhaps I should just elaborate what he told us very slightly. Phipps was medically examined on reception into Birmingham Prison on the day he had appeared before the magistrates, which was 19th December. That medical examination revealed that he had advanced mitral disease which, in medical terminology, appeared to be compensated, or offset, by the fact that the heart was functioning adequately, in spite of the lesion which accompanied the mitral disease of the heart.
817 Although there was obviously, as there is always in these cases, I understand, a risk of a sudden and dangerous deterioration in the condition of the heart, there was no reason to think, as a result of that medical examination, that death was imminent.
As I informed the hon. Member in reply to his Questions on 6th February, Phipps was placed on light sedentary work. He was, in fact, breaking down electrical equipment, and I am told that it was sedentary and not in any way strenuous work. He was in a cell which was properly heated by a central heating system which heated other cells. He was under medical supervision almost daily from the time of his reception and he was again seen by prison doctors on the dates that the hon. Member mentioned between 21st and 25th December. But he was seen by the prison doctors on those dates not on account of any heart failure or anything like that, but on account of bronchial trouble and constipation. However, on 27th December symptoms suggesting a deterioration of the heart condition were noticed, and so he was at once removed to the prison hospital. He was given treatment, and on 4th January he was seen by a consultant physician, who approved the treatment being given to him in hospital. He died two days later, on the 6th.
A post-mortem examination was held which showed that he died of heart disease complicated by pneumonia. I do not wish to make too strong a point of this, but it is material to note that at no time did Phipps make any representation either to my right hon. Friend or to the Prison Commissioners about either his sentence or his treatment in hospital.
Those are the essential facts. Like the hon. Gentleman, I grieve for his family in their sad loss, but I most earnestly feel that on those facts it cannot be said that his death was caused by his being sentenced to prison, by the life which he led in prison or by the treatment which he received medically after his sentence. Indeed, it might, on the other hand, be true to say that a man in his condition can be at least as well cared for after being sent to prison as he might have been outside. After all, he was taken straight to the prison hospital when it was found that his heart was giving him trouble.
818 In those circumstances, while we must all regret the fatal outcome of his sentence and sympathise with his widow and children in their loss, I cannot accept that any strictures should rightly be laid upon anyone who had anything to do with this very sad case.

§ Mr. Edelman
I thank the Joint Under-Secretary for the care with which he has gone into this whole question, which, I am sure, will allay many of the anxieties felt by certain people in Coventry. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman, however, say whether the pneumonia was in any way induced by the man's translation to prison and whether it was thought by the doctors that there were any aggravating factors during his stay in prison which accelerated his death?

§ Mr. Renton
No. So far as the pneumonia is concerned, I ask the hon. Member to bear in mind that the man was in any event a bronchial subject.
Medically, the position is not easy to understand, but I will do my best to explain it. The prisoner was dying of heart disease and his heart was not properly functioning. As a result, his lungs became congested with blood and pneumonia supervened and was, therefore, a contributory cause of death. This may happen, and does happen rather frequently, to patients in the terminal stages of a heart condition of that kind. The fact that it happened in this case is, I am advised, not unusual in any way.
The fair answer, therefore, to the hon. Member's question is that Phipps had all the medical and physical characteristics which would lead to pneumonia if, with his tendency to heart disease and the tendency to bronchitis, he happened to have a heart attack of the kind that he did. Therefore, this is something which, given such a heart attack and given the conditions I have mentioned, would have occurred whether he was in prison or out of prison. Having been carefully into the case, I can see no evidence to suggest that the conditions in prison or the life that he led there in any way brought on pneumonia.