Hospital chief in Baby P case faces growing pressure to quit over scandal

The chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital faced increasing pressure to resign today over the Baby Peter scandal when she was criticised by leading medical journal The Lancet.

Dr Jane Collins has already had a government minister demand that she quit after being accused of covering up a highly critical internal report exposing a series of failings in the way the hospital ran the clinic where Peter was seen two days before his death.

In a signed editorial, Lancet editor Richard Horton suggested the hospital may have deliberately concealed the report's most damning findings to prevent derailing its bid to become a self-governing foundation trust.

He wrote: "What Great Ormond Street Hospital did not need at this stage was a public debate about the integrity of its leadership or the quality of its management of services that failed Baby P. An unkind observer might conclude that GOSH's board is still trying to reduce its exposure to public criticism. I have no evidence to prove that this was (or is) [correct].

"But as one person close to these events put it to me, if GOSH's management team had been in Wigan they would almost certainly have departed by now. Perhaps GOSH is just too important to be seen to fail. Even when a child dies."

Seventeen-month-old Peter Connelly died in August 2007 from injuries caused by his mother, her boyfriend and his brother.

But a report commissioned by the hospital found there was "grave concern" at the way it ran St Ann's clinic in Tottenham, from where a locum paediatrician, Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, sent Peter home after failing to spot his injuries.

Almost half of the contents of the report were withheld from the first serious case review into Peter's death, including criticism of Great Ormond Street's management.

It found that Dr Al-Zayyat should not have been appointed by Great Ormond Street because she had "little experience and training in child protection". It added that the head of the unit, Dr Sukanta Bannerjee, considered working practices there to amount to a "clinically risky situation".

Lynne Featherstone, a Home Office equalities minister and Lib-Dem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, called this month for Dr Collins to resign for "covering up" failings in its care of Baby Peter.

A hospital spokesman said its application for foundation status was "not connected" to the Baby P case. He added: "The trust board are united in the view that nobody sought to mislead anybody [and] nobody needs to resign."

Earlier it said in a statement: "The trust has always accepted its failings in the care of Peter Connelly. There was no intention by Great Ormond Street Hospital management to hide anything."