Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans legal fees cost NHS £400k
Legal battles in the cases of severely ill Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cost almost £500,000, figures show.
Alder Hey and Great Ormond Street hospitals spent a combined total of more than £420,000 on lawyers during the two high-profile disputes. Nearly £50,000 was also spent by the taxpayer-funded Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass). Legal bids to keep doctors treating both children were unsuccessful. Hospital bosses and Cafcass released the figures to the Press Association in response to freedom of information requests. Eleven-month-old Charlie had a rare genetic condition called encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS). He was being treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, where specialists said further life-support treatment was futile and should end. He died in July 2017 after his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, of Bedfont, west London, lost repeated appeals in a legal battle lasting several months. Alfie suffered from a degenerative neurological condition doctors could not definitively identify. Parents Tom Evans and Kate James, from Liverpool, clashed with the city's Alder Hey Children's Hospital over what should happen to Alfie, who had been in a semi-vegetative state for more than a year. His parents said they wanted to fly him to a hospital in Italy but this was blocked by Alder Hey, which said continuing treatment was not in their son's best interests. He died in April shortly before his second birthday after his parents lost a lengthy legal battle. There were multiple hearings in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, and an unsuccessful application to the European Court of Human Rights. Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Charlie was treated, said it spent a total of £205,225 in legal fees. Alder Hey Children's Hospital, where Alfie was treated, said the total was £218,110 excluding VAT. This is over and above money routinely spent on salaried in-house lawyers during litigation. Cafcass, which represents the interests of children in family court cases, said it spent nearly £32,500 in Charlie's case and almost £17,000 in Alfie's case.