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IHRD-2

Criminal Liability for Candour Breach

Hyponatraemia Inquiry · Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths · Issued 31 January 2018 · Addressed to: Northern Ireland Executive

Government responseDepartment of Health NI: Accepted (Mar 2021)

DeliveryDepartment of Health NI states no delivery position (Sep 2025)Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says in progress (Oct 2022)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

Criminal liability should attach to breach of this duty and criminal liability should attach to obstruction of another in the performance of this duty.

Hyponatraemia Inquiry, Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths · 31 Jan 2018 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

The Inquiry recommended attaching criminal liability to breaching or obstructing the duty of candour. In September 2025, Mike Nesbitt, Minister of Health, reaffirmed support for an organisational duty of candour, though criminal liability and obstruction were not mentioned (Mike Nesbitt, Sep 2025). In November 2024, the Minister questioned in the Northern Ireland Assembly whether an individual duty with criminal sanctions would enforce a "chill factor" or open things up (Mike Nesbitt, Nov 2024). In October 2022, the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) stated that initial work had been completed and transferred responsibility to a departmental policy area (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Oct 2022).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 1 Oct 2026.

Report-level response context

The Minister of Health accepted all 96 recommendations together, in one sentence of a written statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 25 March 2021. That sentence is not a response to any one recommendation alone, and the Department of Health published no response to each recommendation. The Department's statements of 31 January, 2 February and 30 March 2018 contain no acceptance of the recommendations.

Government response

●Department of Health NI · Accepted · 25 Mar 2021

Words of: Mr Swann, Minister of Health, written ministerial statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly, 25 March 2021

My Department accepts the recommendations of the O'Hara Report in their entirety.

Extract from: Department of Health - Inquiry into Hyponatraemia Related Deaths (IHRD) Implementation Programme Update

Delivery

●Department of Health NI states no delivery position · 18 Sep 2025

I have previously made clear my support for an Organisational Duty of Candour in Northern Ireland, aligned with the statutory frameworks already in place across other UK jurisdictions.

From: Department of Health Proposals on a Duty of Candour Bill for Northern Ireland, Mike Nesbitt, Minister of Health (Northern Ireland)

●Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says in progress · 28 Oct 2022

the 37 actions, where initial work has been completed, but where it is now appropriate to transfer responsibility for these recommendations from the IHRD implementation programme to the appropriate DoH policy area.

From: IHRD Implementation Programme Update - Departmental Statement October 2022 (document heading: Update from the Department of Health on the implementation of the report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths)

Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.

Site note: The Department's October 2022 statement gives this passage once, for a group of 37 actions, and does not list the recommendations in the group. The site places this recommendation in it from the Department's per-action list of the same date, where Phase 2B holds 37 actions.

Earlier statements on delivery (0)

●Department of Health NI · 11 Nov 2024

As we move forward on an organisational duty of candour, it will also give us a further opportunity to involve key stakeholders in the development of the policy. I talk often about trying to avoid the chill factor. One Member pointed out that not all clinical decisions will have successful outcomes, and perhaps a chill factor would impact a clinician in deciding whether to perform a certain procedure. There is also the question of whether people who know what went wrong will be willing to speak out. When I spoke to a lot of the victims who lost loved ones to Dr Watt, they were clear in their minds that people around Dr Watt knew exactly what he was doing and the harm that he was creating but were afraid to speak out. The question is whether an individual duty of candour that is legally binding and has criminal sanctions will further enforce that chill factor or open things up.

From: Official Report (Hansard), Monday 11 November 2024: Private Members' Business, Statutory Duty of Candour, Mike Nesbitt, Minister of Health (Northern Ireland)

Site note: From the same speech. The recommendation asks that criminal liability attach to a breach of the duty of candour; the passage is the Minister's view of an individual duty with criminal sanctions. The speech does not give it a number.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.