[2025] EWHC 2684 (KB)

Mr Cooper signed a witness statement for these proceedings on 9^th December 2015.

Given the Claimants’ case in relation to Mr Cooper’s interview and statement it is necessary to consider his evidence in relation to his interaction with officers in some detail.

Mr Cooper worked for Chancellor Care Limited at Cawston Park from September 2005 to July 2006 in the role of operational manager. He described his general day-to-day duties as administrative. He was responsible for the day-to-day running of the hospital, including being in charge of staffing the hospital and checking the patient care plans were completed and up to date.

Mr. Cooper was interviewed on the 1st September 2006 by DS Brownsell and DC Baker who travelled down to see him in Exeter (where he was living after leaving Cawston Park a month earlier).

Mr Cooper set out in his witness statement for this action that his overall impression of the police interview was one of unprofessionalism and that the police had already made their minds up that the Claimants were guilty. He said that prior to starting the interview the officers told him that they had enough evidence to convict the Claimants and that he remembered asking “why do you want to interview me then?”

Mr Cooper stated in his witness statement for this action that:

“I remember being concerned the tape was turned off on several occasions throughout the interview. A cigarette break was the usual reason. I now recollect the tape appeared to be turned off and another cigarette break suggested at times when I was making positive and complimentary comments about Cawston Park Hospital and its management and also when I was making uncomplimentary comments about Mark Deveney. I told the police officers that he was unprofessional and a bully and even told the police that if they were relying on Mark as a witness “You’ve not got a celluloid rat in hell’s chance.””

He also stated that he believed the interview lasted longer than the length of the time the tape was running, that many comments were made off record and during the course of the interview the police officers switched from being very friendly towards him to quite aggressive and intimidating. He stated that during the interview the officers appeared disinterested in what he told them about staffing levels.

When challenged about his recollection being set out in 2015 Mr Cooper appeared to suggest that he had “forgotten about all of this stuff”, but now recollected it.

As for extra care he stated:

“Since the collapse of the trial, on reflection, I believe that the police had decided their own definition of the term “extra care”. When the term was put to me at interview through their questioning, I was confused and did not know what “extra care” meant in this context. The actual term was not familiar to me and I got the impression that the police interpreted my not knowing of the term as evidence that fraud was occurring. This is something that I never believed to be true. Although I had nothing to do with the charging system at Cawston Park Hospital, had I been asked I could have told the police that in my extensive experience of private psychiatry, when contracting with the National Health Service it is perfectly normal for clinically more difficult patients to be charged an additional sum over and above those of the less difficult.” (underlining added)

And

“If the police had explained to me properly what the accusations were, rather than just out of the blue asking me if I knew anything about extra care, a term I was not properly familiar with, then I am quite sure I would have been better able to assist the officers in understanding how the hospital operated, how patients were receiving a high quality service and how some of the more difficult patients received “more” than others.”

Mr Cooper clearly recognized that his police statement was not as strongly supportive of the Claimants as it might have been (and as, it appears, his evidence at trial was). Objectively it could reasonably and properly be thought somewhat strange that the operational manager of the hospital who was responsible for the day-to-day running of the hospital, and, most significantly in charge of staffing was unaware of the extra care charging regime which on the Claimants case required a permanent staffing level able to cope with the most demanding patients.

Mr Cooper explained about his police statement;

“I have asked myself why I did not query my statement at the time, pointing out the omissions, I can only say that the strong impression I received from the police was that my statement was unimportant and was unlikely to be used. I did not realise the significance of the allegations being made and how the term “extra care” was so important to this case. I signed the statement at the end of the interview on the second day, at a point when I was eager to go home.”

In his oral evidence Mr Cooper said that it was a “good cop/bad cop” scenario with DC Baker being friendly and “chipper” and DS Brownsell just staring at him and that in his view the officers did not ask the right questions; “they just kept going on about extra care”. He said that he just answered the questions and did not expand and that “extra care was not within my remit”.

Mr Cooper was taken to what he set out in the statement compiled for this claim about the circumstances and length of the interviews and asked how these details came to be included given that they were plainly wrong (the implied suggestion being that someone else had provided this detail). He was taken to the interview and challenged on his comment that the tape was switched off and there was a break when he was making uncomplimentary comments about Mark Deveney. It was pointed out that within the interview he described Deveney in various recorded answers as strange, egotistical; with an ego “as big as you like” a bully, very obstructive, someone who exaggerates, very territorial, evasive, lacking in transparency and that he did not find him a truthful or genuine person. Mr Cooper accepted that the tape was not switched off during such comments (the first break was at a time when the subject was staffing levels and after Mr Cooper raised that he would “nip out for a fag” rather than DS Brownsell or DC Baker switching the tape off when he was saying uncomplimentary things about Mr Deveney). If such inaccuracy was not concerning enough Mr Warnock pointed out that during a comfort break (but caught on the tape) Mr Cooper said, unprompted

“I mean, off the record, I mean Deveney’s a piss artist. He was hungover most mornings.”

Importantly when the tape was then back running DC Baker immediately did the exact opposite of what was alleged by Mr Cooper in that he brought an uncomplimentary comment from off the record onto the record;

“That’s um interesting to hear because everything you are…tell us we want to hear. Because as we explained to you during the fag break is we have the allegation and we have to investigate it …and we investigate it with an open mind…but you are saying that Mark Deveney…would be hung over in the mornings you say.”

To which Mr Cooper responded

“Well he would be sweating like a bull most mornings. You know, I mean I don’t want to sound biased in this but like I say I always found Andrew Breeze a guy who had a lot of integrity and I found Mark as someone who didn’t.”