A fashionable London Catholic hospital is under investigation by the government's Charity Commission for failing to disclose vital information surrounding an £11 million loan.On January 3, the hospital's board announced that a practice of National Health Service GP's, who are obliged to provide abortion referrals and contraceptive prescriptions, would move onto the hospital's premises January 14, despite the hospital's adoption of a code of ethics banning such practices.
The heavily secularized board of the fashionable private hospital on Grove End Road in St John's Wood, has been battling efforts by the Archbishop of Westminster to bring the hospital's practices into line with Catholic teaching. But the hospital had already invited a group of NHS doctors to take up residence in a building on its premises, Brampton House.
Money to refurbish Brampton House was obtained with the approval of the Charity Commission, but the government agency was not informed that a clause in the NHS GPs' lease would allow them to opt out of the hospital's hard-won ethics code. The Charity Commission was shown a copy of the lease but with the clause omitted.
The Restituta Group, a group campaigning to return the hospital to a genuine Catholic character, informed the Charity Commission that the hospital was planning to allow GP's to ignore its recently adopted code of ethics.
After 18 months of resistance and the resignation of some of its members, the hospital's board agreed to adopt a code of ethics that would bar its employees from engaging in any practices that contradict Catholic medical ethics. The revised code bars any employee from any act that conflicts with Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and on sexuality. In addition to abortion referrals and contraceptives, the hospital may not carry out the surgical mutilations called "sex-change" operations or artificial procreation treatments such as in vitro fertilisation.
The secretary of the Restituta Group, Nicolas J Bellord, told media, "The board had voted to proceed with allowing the entrance of the medical practice into the former Convent of Mercy on January 14, 2008 in order to provide referrals for abortion, the full range of contraceptive services, in total disregard of the code of ethics which they had accepted at their previous meeting, albeit not to be implemented 'just yet'".
Louise Edwards, a Senior Manager within the Charity Commission's Compliance and Support Division will lead an investigation into both SS John and Elizabeth Charity and the Brampton Trust.
Bellord added, "We think there is a contradiction there and we are very disappointed. We are now hoping that the Charity Commission will take some action."
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