Meeting to reveal Shipman inquiry timetable

The British High Court judge chairing the inquiry into serial killer GP Harold Shipman was today holding a public meeting to announce the timetable for hearings due to start next month.

Dame Janet Smith was explaining to dozens of relatives of the family doctor’s suspected victims how she will conduct the public inquiry into Shipman’s killing spree which is thought to have spanned more than two decades.

Families of the victims - who it is now thought could number up to 300 - last year successfully challenged Health Secretary Alan Milburn to win the right to have the inquiry conducted in public.

The hearings in the first phase of the inquiry start at Manchester Town Hall on June 20.

They will examine how many patients Shipman may have murdered and how he carried out the killings.

A second phase of the inquiry will go on to look at the roles of the authorities and individuals in a system that allowed the 55-year-old doctor to continue his murders undetected for years.

A third phase will report on what steps should be taken to protect patients in the future.

During the lengthy hearings, the roles of the health authorities, other doctors, police and coroners are all expected to be questioned.

The doctor, from Mottram, Tameside, Greater Manchester, who ran his one-man practice in nearby Hyde from 1977, was convicted at Preston Crown Court in January last year of murdering 15 women patients by heroin injection.

But a clinical audit revealed the true death toll could be approaching 300.

Verdicts of unlawful killing have since been recorded by South Manchester Coroner John Pollard on a further 26 patients.

Shipman was brought from Durham jail by police last week to be questioned over other suspicious deaths from his first practice in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.

A file on six deaths has gone to the Crown Prosecution Service, although further charges have been ruled out.