§ Mr. CatonTo ask the Solicitor-General whether investigations into the criminal cases in which a parent has been convicted of murdering a child will include an assessment of whether(a) cisapride and (b) other drugs contributed to the deaths. [153753]
§ The Solicitor-GeneralSince the release of Angela Cannings by the Court of Appeal and its published judgment, the Attorney-General has instigated a number of measures. A total of 258 convictions over the last 10 years for the murder, manslaughter or infanticide of a child under two by its parent have been identified. Of those, a total of 72 relate to persons still serving a custodial sentence. These will be accorded the utmost priority. Currently, some 365 boxes of evidence relating to 52 high profile cases have been recovered from central storage and dispatched to CPS areas for them to conduct an initial review. The remaining high profile cases are being recovered from the areas themselves.
With the help of the Interdepartmental Group a system of review has been established. Each individual case will first be subject to a preliminary review by the relevant CPS Area to identify its key characteristics. Each case will then be reviewed by a central review team to establish whether any features identified by the Court of Appeal in Angela Cannings' judgment make the conviction potentially unsafe. As the review proceeds, the issues in each case will become clearer and the review team will be alert for any factors, including drugs, which were held to have contributed towards the death of an infant.