Liverpool A hospital where the body parts of dead children were retained without parental consent is to bury unclaimed remains.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, was at the centre of a scandal in 1999 when it emerged that doctors had been harvesting organs and tissue during postmortem examinations. The hospital trust and Liverpool University announced yesterday that relatives of 10,000 deceased children had until May to collect samples, including parts from 1,000 miscarried or aborted foetuses.

Any not claimed would be buried.

Mark Caswell, the assistant medical director at Alder Hey, said: “Neither the trust nor the university wishes to cause further distress to bereaved parents.”

The irregularities at Alder Hey came to light at an inquiry into baby deaths at Bristol Royal Infirmiry, where a witness noted seeing body parts stored in pots in Liverpool.

An inquiry under Michael Redfern, QC, was launched and a Dutch pathologist, Dick van Velzen, was later ordered to be struck from the medical register .

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