A consultant paediatrician who was found guilty of serious professional misconduct for falsely accusing a man of murdering his sons is to be investigated for possible non-disclosure of evidence in criminal trials, the Attorney General has announced. Lord Goldsmith told Parliament that he would be reviewing the cases in which Prof David Southall was a prosecution witness.

{mosimage}Prof Southall was suspended from child protection work for three years in 2004 for wrongly accusing Stephen Clark of killing his children on the strength of a television documentary. Mr Clark’s wife, Sally, a solicitor, had been wrongly convicted of killing her sons and freed on appeal.

Prof Southall is currently facing a hearing before a General Medical Council ‘fitness to practise’ panel on a separate matter. He is alleged to have kept about 4,450 “special” case files on children which were not stored on the child’s proper hospital file.

Lord Goldsmith’s spokesman said there were concerns that proper disclosure of medical records may not have been made in cases that led to a prosecution. The review will go back more than 10 years and will examine all 4,450 “special” files created by Prof Southall, who practised from London’s Royal Brompton Hospital and North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Stoke-on-Trent.

The Attorney General said in a written ministerial statement to the House of Lords: “It is said that Prof Southall kept so-called ‘special case’ files containing original medical records relating to his patients that were not also kept on the child’s proper hospital file. Concerns have been raised that in some of those cases criminal proceedings may have been taken but the existence of the files not revealed, resulting in their not being disclosed as part of the prosecution process. I share those concerns.

A north London council criticised for failing to save the life of Victoria Climbié faces new allegations that social workers ignored other child abuse cases. Claims made by a Haringey senior social worker, Nevres Kemal, allege that the council’s inaction exposed seven children to serious risk of abuse by their stepfather.

A hearing into the conduct of a Registered Social Worker from Southampton will be held from 26 to 28 February 2007 by the social care workforce regulator the General Social Care Council (GSCC).