Robert Barnor (Photo: Christian Legal Centre)
The Christian Legal Centre (CLC) has intervened in the case of a husband and father who is to have life-sustaining treatment withdrawn by the NHS.
Robert Barnor, 68, collapsed following a stroke in April 2025 and was admitted to St Helier Hospital Intensive Care Unit. By July his neurological condition had improved and he had been taken off a life support ventilator. However, as a diabetic, Barnor requires dialysis twice a week in order to live.
Solicitors for the NHS have said they will be ending treatment immediately. Doctors have said that, due to the extent of brain damage, it is in Barnor’s best interests to die. The family says that hospital authorities have resisted requests for medical records and brain scans that would back up or disprove that view.
Requests to discharge Barnor to his home, a care home or a neuro-rehabilitation centre or even out of Intensive Care, have been denied.
On 6 February the family were informed that a “clinical decision” had been taken that Barnor should be allowed to die, this despite the hospital previously agreeing to discuss the issue with the family with a professional mediator, the CLC says.
The CLC has made an application to the High Court, on behalf of Barnor’s family, asking it to make a judgment on his care.
Barnor’s daughter, Lesley Townsend, said, “My father’s life hangs in the balance, and yet the Trust has chosen to keep us in the dark and push ahead with a plan that they know is unlawful.
“We have been patiently trying to engage in good faith and listen to the doctors’ views with an open mind. From the outset, whenever we tried to discuss the situation with doctors to understand my father’s best interests, we were met with a culture of ‘no’ .
“One day we were told we were following a legal process to resolve any disagreements; the next day it was swept aside with a high-handed declaration that the Trust has decided to condemn my father to death and we are not allowed to have any say about this.
“As a family facing a tragic situation, we also had a face a sustained campaign of strong-arming from the Trust bureaucracy. No family should ever have to go through this. We are simply asking the Trust to follow the law.”
CLC chief executive Andrea Williams said, “When there is a dispute about a patient’s best interests, the law requires an application to the Court of Protection. Clinicians do not have the power to end a patient’s life by withdrawing treatment simply because they prefer their own view over the family’s.
“Judicial oversight of such life-and-death decisions is one remaining legal safeguard – weak and inadequate as it currently is – for the principle of sanctity of life and to protect the rights of families against irreversible decisions driven by the culture of ‘right to die’. We are ready to stand with the family in their time of need.”
The hospital is believed to dispute the view that an application to the Court of Protection is required in Mr Barnor’s case.
A spokesman for Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Trust said: “Our sympathies are with the family at this very difficult time, and we will continue to do all we can to support them.”
