Deep deep shame on BBC for disgraceful Valdo Calocane Panorama - Peter Bleksley

Not long before Ian was murdered, Calocane had wickedly taken the lives of two beautiful and richly talented Nottingham University students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar. He went on to seriously injure several others, as he drove Ian’s stolen van into them.

Astonishingly, the Crown Prosecution Service accepted pleas from Calocane to offences of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, rather than murder, and therefore this brute was detained indefinitely in a secure hospital, rather than a prison. Understandably, this outcome caused widespread outrage, none more so than among the loved ones who were left behind to serve a true life-sentence of loss and hurt, the friends and relatives of Ian, Barnaby and Grace. Calocane’s lawyers, and some people with medical qualifications had claimed that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time that he killed his victims.

Many, many issues were raised by this tragic case. Police officers faced disciplinary hearings. Two police forces remain under investigation. An enquiry was launched into the NHS trust that had responsibility for treating Calocane. All matters will be thoroughly examined during a judge-led inquiry that will take place at some point in the future.

The report into the NHS trust was published this week. I’ve read sizeable chunks of it. Failure after failure by medical staff are highlighted. I can only guess at the level of hurt that it must have caused the families of the victims. Enter stage left the publicly funded state broadcaster, otherwise known as the BBC.

They had been given pre-publication sight of this NHS report by members of the Calocane family. Someone, somewhere, or quite possibly a committee of highly paid Beeb commissioners, had decided that it was appropriate to give a green light to Panorama, to make a programme where Calocane’s mother and brother would discuss the report on camera, together with expressing their emotions surrounding their son and brother, and how they felt about his unforgivable killing spree.

As if that wasn’t tasteless enough, the corporation then plumbed new depths of completely disrespectful, selfish and guttural behaviour by not allowing the bereaved families sight of this programme, before it was aired. I watched it, so you don’t have to. Please don’t waste 30 minutes of your life on it.

Paranoid schizophrenia is complex, and nobody knows exactly what causes it, but it is widely accepted among medical circles that risk factors can be; ‘Genetic mutations you inherit from one or both parents, exposure to certain chemicals or substances, complications during pregnancy and recreational drug use.’

At no point during this rag-tag show did the lame presenter ask any questions of his family, as to how Calocane may have come to be a paranoid schizophrenic. I would have thought it incumbent upon a show made using public funds to ask all the contributors, ‘Did you ever see Calocane smoke a cannabis joint?’, and to broadcast the answer. But no, not a trace of any such probative, potential truth-seeking questioning.

For me, and I would imagine for many others who had the misfortune to stick with this programme throughout, the most appalling part was saved for the end. The presenter informed us that Calocane, ‘was now getting the care he needs’, as if we should be endlessly grateful for that.

Then in a softly spoken way, the style more usually used for victim’s families, he asked Calocane’s brother, ‘What’s it like talking to Valdo now?’ He tearfully replied, ‘It’s like talking to my brother.’ Well, if that’s the case, then surely the time has arrived for Calocane to be transferred from the more comfortable regime of a secure hospital to a maximum-security prison.

Shabana Mahmood MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, are you listening?