The Stoke CNEP Saga – the Government enquiry in retrospect*

Sustained media coverage of allegations about the CNEP trial created pressure on the Department of Health. The responsible minister quite rightly stuck to the line that appropriate mechanisms already existed to investigate matters of individual care (the NHS complaints process) or individual professional misconduct (the GMC and other professional regulators) but this was not enough to make the problem go away. Eventually the minister came to the conclusion that one aspect that was not being investigated was the framework through which research was supervised in the North Staffordshire NHS Trust. The review thus covered research governance, though many have mistakenly assumed that it was about misconduct. Had it been about research misconduct I might well have refused to lead it.