THE Government was accused yesterday of inexcusable negligence in its care for patients with mental health problems after a senior minister said that a damning report on sexual assaults in the sector would be published shortly.

Lord Warner, the Health Minister, told the House of Lords that the latest version of the Mental Health Observatory Report would be made public to ensure that the NHS had an accurate picture of incidents of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment in mental health institutions.

His comments, and a barrage of questions from politicians across all parties, came days after The Times disclosed that the report details more than 100 cases of sexual assault and harassment over less than two years — information that the Government has held for more than eight months.

The Times now understands that the number of assaults includes 19 reported rapes. Tim Loughton, the Conservatives’ health spokesman, said yesterday that the Government should have issued an alert as soon as it became aware of such serious concerns.

Lord Warner, addressing the House of Lords on Wednesday, faced a succession of questions from concerned peers about The Times’s revelations. He defended the Government’s actions, saying that there were concerns in the Department of Health about the accuracy of the most serious incidents, which were being reviewed.

He added that the report would now be issued in its current state to show the true picture of what had occurred. But Mr Loughton said that such an approach was inexcusable, adding that it should not take eight months to check nineteen cases.

He said that the Government was once again acting after pressure from the press, rather than in the interests of the public. The delay in issuing any sort of alert about the continuing incidents, and the potential risk that this posed to patients, seemed to be a strategy to avoid humiliating criticism of government failings, he added.

“If you had this level of rapes in other parts of the NHS there would be an absolute outcry,” he said.

The report’s findings bring into question the Government’s claim to have set up single-sex wards that are safe and to ensure personal dignity across the health service. The pledge, made by Tony Blair in 1996, was supposed to have been met by the end of 2002.

Details of the report come from data collected by the National Learning and Reporting System, a monitoring programme set up in November 2003 by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA).

All healthcare organisations were linked to the system by the end of 2004, and the first national report was published last year. However, such was the concern over sexual assault in mental health institutions that the Mental Health Observatory Report was commissioned.

Most of the recorded incidents took place in the 12 months to October 2005 as most mental health trusts were among the last organisations to join the reporting programme. It is understood to include both patient-on-patient and staff- on-patient incidents.

Responding to a question from Baroness Barker, the Liberal Democrat peer, about the delays disclosed by The Times, Lord Warner said that such concerns were taken very seriously. Lord Warner said: “We have concerns about some information on sexual allegations and are working with the NPSA to establish the accuracy of the most serious allegations.”

He added that the Government had introduced the reporting system under the NPSA, and the “leaked document . . . demonstrated that there is a more open culture in the NHS”.

Mental health campaigners, including the charity Mind, described the report as “extremely concerning”, adding that with an estimated 22 per cent of safety incidents in the NHS going unreported, the full picture could be even worse.

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