The British Health Secretary, Mr Frank Dobson, yesterday refused to close a top security hospital despite a devastating report having found evidence of porn and paedophile activity and called for the institution to shut "at the earliest opportunity".
The chairman of the Ashworth Hospital Authority, Mr Paul Lever, resigned immediately after the publication of the report.
The nine-month inquiry into the running of the Personality Disorder Unit (PDU) at Ashworth in Merseyside found "astounding" evidence that an eight-year-old girl had been repeatedly smuggled onto a ward and left alone with convicted paedophiles.
Mr Peter Fallon QC, who headed the inquiry, said the girl was being "groomed for paedophile purposes" and was smuggled on to Lawrence Ward in the PDU for more than six years "weekend after weekend", by her father, a former patient. While there was no evidence to prove the girl had been abused, Mr Fallon said he "could not fail to see" how a young child could not have been damaged by the experience.
Pornography was "widely available", security was "farcical" and the whole unit "deeply flawed", the inquiry team found.
Mr Fallon concluded: "The hospital's negative, defensive and blame-ridden culture is so deeply ingrained that we doubt even the most talented management team could turn it around. Ashworth Hospital should close at the earliest opportunity."
However, Mr Dobson rejected the inquiry's recommendation and granted the hospital - which holds some of Britain's most disturbed and dangerous criminals - a reprieve. He told the House of Commons that the institution's problems were not those of "bricks and mortar" but of management and gave the hospital four months to turn itself round.
Mr Dobson said the inquiry had painted a "shameful picture" of the Personality Disorder Unit and admitted that the hospital was "a mess".
However, he told MPs: "The report recommends the closure of Ashworth Hospital. We do not accept that recommendation."
While acknowledging that there was much work to be done, Mr Dobson said new appointments had seen a substantial improvement in management and the quality of the medical staff, while security had been tightened.
The inquiry team were clearly disappointed with Mr Dobson's refusal to close Ashworth.
They have recommended that patients with personality disorders are treated in smaller separate units away from other mentally ill people and have advocated wide-scale reform of what they called a "rotten" system.
Asked how he felt about Mr Dobson's decision, Mr Fallon would only say: "Frankly, we disagree."
The £7.5 million inquiry was set up after former Ashworth patient Stephen Daggett, a convicted sex offender, absconded from the hospital for 10 days in 1997 and made a series of allegations about life in the hospital's Personality Disorder Unit. Daggett, now housed at Rampton Hospital, spent 12 years in Ashworth and said he had witnessed a catalogue of management failures which had led in some cases to violent patients effectively controlling the Personality Disorder Unit, no-go areas for staff and both patients and staff being threatened.
Publishing his report, Mr Fallon was scathing about the management which presided over Ashworth at the time of the problems uncovered.
"The management culture of the hospital was dysfunctional. Senior managers were secretive, out of touch and totally unable to control this large institution," he said.
Five members of staff were suspended during the inquiry and two chief executives resigned within a year of each other after the probe was launched by former Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell.