A Kent hospital has apologised for a "tragic mistake" where a dead baby boy was lost in a linen basket and re-discovered on the conveyor belt of an industrial laundry. Police confirmed the baby's remains had been put through a 95 degree (F) boil wash, along with contaminated clothes from the mortuary from which the body had disappeared, at a laundry in Brixton, 13 miles away.
But the father of James Fernandez - born 17 weeks premature, weighing just 1lb 1oz - branded the apology "too little, too late" and said the horrific chain of events at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, showed the National Health Service was "a disgrace".
And the state of Britain's NHS remained top of the political agenda as the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Conservative leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith clashed for the second week running in the Commons on an issue ministers fear could run all the way to the next election.
Mr Blair repeatedly denied Accident and Emergency Departments across the country were "in crisis" and challenged the Conservative leader to say whether he supported Labour's investment programme.
Mr Duncan Smith said the government's own figures showed the number of patients seen in Accident and Emergency within an hour had fallen from 75 per cent under the Tories to around 50 per cent under Labour.
And the Tory leader quoted the consultant at Kent and Canterbury Hospital who said last weekend: "The state of A&E is dreadful. People sit here for three or four days in an open corridor. The standards of care are unacceptable. The nurses go round in tears."
However, as Mr Blair and Mr Duncan Smith traded statistical blows about numbers and waiting times, the public focus was on the almost unimaginable grief of Mr Patrick Kelly and his Spanish partner, Ms Amaia Fernandez, who discovered that the body of their baby was missing from St Mary's Hospital four days before his funeral.
The hospital's chief executive, Ms Helen Moffatt, said: "It has been a tragic one-off mistake, a combination of factors predominantly about how the laundry bag was placed near to where the body was stored." Describing the distress of the hospital staff, she said changes had been made to ensure such an incident would never happen again.