Next January, the Supreme Court will consider a seminal legal case focusing on the death of 68-year-old Robert Barnor at St Helier Hospital in London in February 2026.
Central to the controversy is Professor Lynne Turner-Stokes, a rehabilitation consultant who advised the Hospital to stop Mr Barnor’s dialysis – and thus end his life – by a unilateral ‘clinical decision’, without his family’s agreement and without seeking permission from the Court of Protection.
Just before Mr Barnor’s death, three Court of Appeal judges ruled that, contrary to Turner-Stokes’s advice, life-sustaining treatment cannot be lawfully withdrawn without a decision of the court.
However, that ruling came too late to save Mr Barnor’s life.
Professor Turner-Stokes is the NHS’s National Clinical Lead for prolonged disorders of consciousness and the director of the Regional Hyperacute Rehabilitation Unit (RHRU) at Northwick Park Hospital in North London. She is now due to take charge of the end-of-life care in another controversial case, where a High Court judge, Mr Justice McKendrick, recently ordered to withdraw food and fluids from a 28-year-old man suffering from a disorder of consciousness following a brain injury 6.5 years ago, overruling the unanimous opinion of his family and all treating clinicians that it was in the man’s best interests to continue treatment.
Under the draconian “Transparency Order” made by the Court, the man must be kept anonymous and is known only as FHR. His mother, known as FN, who is supported by Christian Legal Centre, is strictly prohibited from revealing her own identity in connection with the case or publishing any photographs or videos of her son. The NHS North East London Integrated Care Board (ICB) has made an application to commit FN to prison for alleged breaches of that order.
Following a trial in August 2026, Mr Justice McKendrick ruled that continuation of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH) is not in FHR’s best interests because it “is futile and consigns FHR to an existence of distress with such limited consciousness and communication that his life is devoid of comfort or pleasure.”
He ordered that FHR should be transferred to the RHRU for food and fluids to be withdrawn to commence a “palliative care pathway.”
According to the evidence given at the trial, Professor Turner-Stokes had told the ICB that RHRU has greater experience than any other unit in the country of withdrawing CANH from patients and providing end-of-life care.
The ICB manager quoted Professor Turner-Stokes as telling her that families of dying patients on occasions accused RHRU staff of “murder” and that the RHRU operates a “zero tolerance” policy. Professor Turner-Stokes was quoted as saying that in the past, RHRU “had to” call security to escort such family members from the premises where their relative was dying. She added: “This is raised not to pre-judge FHR’s family, but so that the Court and those advising the family are aware of the RHRU’s policy in this regard.”
The Court of Appeal has granted a “stay of execution” of the order of Mr Justice McKendrick to transfer FHR to the RHRU until 2 October 2026, pending the Mother’s appeal against the order.
In the meantime, the ICB informed the family that the RHRU “wants a complete ban on contact” between FHR and his mother while FHR is receiving end-of-life care at the unit.
Christian Legal Centre, who is supporting both FN and Mr Barnor’s family, has publicly urged Professor Turner-Stokes to step aside from delivering end-of-life care to patients while the circumstances of Mr Barnor’s death are being investigated by the Coroner, and the lawfulness of ending his life pursuant to Turner-Stokes’s advice is being scrutinised by the Supreme Court.
Christian Legal Centre’s Chief Executive, Andrea Williams, said:
“The public must not be asked to accept a ‘trust us’ approach where a patient’s life is at stake. Until the serious questions raised by Mr Barnor’s death have been answered, Professor Turner-Stokes should not be directing another contested end-of-life process. The safeguards exist for a reason: to protect vulnerable patients, uphold the rule of law and give families confidence that every possible protection has been observed.”
“If there is so much as a suspicion that a patient’s death resulted from a tragic mistake by a doctor, it is a matter of elementary professional ethics for that doctor to step aside from similar cases while the matter is being fully investigated. Until and unless the controversies raised by Mr Barnor’s case are resolved, Professor Turner-Stokes should have no role in directing any process that could lead to a patient’s death.
The stakes are simply too high, and public confidence in the UK’s system of end-of-life care and decision-making has already been seriously undermined.
“How can FHR’s family have confidence in a clinician whose approach in a previous end-of-life case was rejected by the Court of Appeal and criticised for seeking to avoid the very protections that exist to safeguard vulnerable patients? The evidence in Mr Barnor’s case suggested that Professor Turner-Stokes advised the NHS Trust to evade vital legal safeguards and smooth the path towards the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment without proper scrutiny in the Court of Protection.
“This is a red-line issue: no doctor facing unresolved questions over one disputed death should be directing the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment in another case. Professor Turner-Stokes must step aside now. Anything less risks compounding the family’s anguish and further shattering public confidence in end-of-life care.”
“The public must not be asked to accept a ‘trust us’ approach where a patient’s life is at stake. Until the serious questions raised by Mr Barnor’s death have been answered, Professor Turner-Stokes should not be directing another contested end-of-life process. The safeguards exist for a reason: to protect vulnerable patients, uphold the rule of law and give families confidence that every possible protection has been observed.”
FHR’s mother, FN, said:
“My son and his entire family are treated by the NHS North East London ICB with unbelievable cruelty. I feel like I am living a nightmare. My son might or might not have eventually recovered from his brain injury, but for almost five years, he was stable and happy living at home surrounded by his family and a team of nurses and carers who know and love him. Then the ICB kidnapped him from home, locked him up in an infection-ridden institution where his health deteriorated, banned me from visiting him, gagged me from speaking about him, and finally ordered Professor Turner-Stokes to starve and dehydrate him to death.
“Professor Turner-Stokes proudly introduced herself as someone whom families of her patients accused of murder and who will not hesitate to call security to get the family out of her unit. It is not just the families, but judges in the Court of Appeal who have raised serious questions about her conduct, recently leading to a death of another patient after an unlawful withdrawal of treatment. The fact that she, of all people, is now appointed to execute the Court’s order to end my son’s life speaks volumes about the evil system which threatens welfare and life of every disabled person like my son.
“The Court of Protection is supposed to protect vulnerable people from cruelty and harm. In reality, every step of the way, the Court has rubber-stamped every order the ICB has requested to harm my vulnerable child and eventually to end his life.”
Mr Barnor’s daughter, Lesley Barnor Townsend, said:
“Professor Turner-Stokes (whose name was initially hidden from us until court proceedings) was originally sold to my father’s family as “a neurologist with expert knowledge in prolonged disorders of consciousness”. We later discovered from the court documents that she was nothing of the kind. The only thing she was an expert in was advising St Helier Hospital how they could hasten my father’s death.
“The Court of Appeal has ruled that the withdrawal of treatment from my father was unlawful, yet nobody has been held accountable.
“We are now astounded to see Turner-Stokes at the centre of another horrid case, in charge of ending another life, demanding to ban the mother from seeing her dying son and threatening families with being removed by security.
“Surely, compassion to patients and their families should be a lynchpin of end-of-life care. The brutal treatment of families proposed and apparently practiced by Turner-Stokes should have been unthinkable in any compassionate healthcare system. We as a family are very alarmed – and the public should be very alarmed – to see a person like Turner-Stokes near the top of the system of end-of-life care in this country.
“The government must urgently sort out the ongoing awful abuses in end-of-life care, and the sensible first step is for Turner-Stokes and people like her to be removed from positions of power. What has happened to us and what is happening to FHR’s family must never happen to any family.”
Robert Barnor’s death: an ongoing controversy
In the important judgment about Mr Barnor’s case, reported as Townsend v Epsom [2026] EWCA Civ 195, ruled that it was unlawful for NHS bodies to withdraw life-sustaining treatment without either an agreement with the patient’s family or the permission of the Court.
Giving the unanimous judgment of the Court, Lord Justice Baker declared: “The hospital cannot pre-empt court proceedings by unilaterally withholding or withdrawing treatment on “clinical” grounds.”
He added: “The course taken by the Trust in this case was contrary to established principle and practice articulated in the case law, the Code of Practice, and guidance.”
Mr Barnor was taken to hospital after his son and his daughter found him collapsed and unconscious at home following a stroke. He made some recovery and was successfully weaned off a life support machine, but due to kidney failure caused by pre-existing diabetes, remained dependent on dialysis provided twice a week.
According to the evidence given to the courts, Mr Barnor’s condition continued to improve and his family often saw him awake and responsive. His daughter described him as tracking the family and nurse with his eyes, squeezing his wife’s hand, responding to requests that he squeeze it harder, blinking on request, reacting to music, and pointing when he wanted help.
The Trust disagreed with the family that Mr Barnor’s treatment should continue and argued it was in his best interests to die. The Trust and the family agreed to meet in mediation in an effort to resolve their dispute. In late January 2026, the central line through which dialysis was provided became blocked, and the doctors inserted a temporary line for short-term use.
In a dramatic volte face, a few days before the scheduled mediation in February, the Trust informed the family via solicitors that it would stop providing dialysis with immediate effect. The Trust argued that, as this was a “clinical decision”, it was unnecessary to obtain permission from the Court of Protection before stopping life-sustaining treatment and there was nothing the family could do about it. The solicitors’ letter stated: “Without dialysis, Mr Barnor is expected to die from complications of kidney failure within days.”
The family, supported by Christian Legal Centre, made an emergency application to the courts.
The Court of Appeal examined a “second opinion” prepared by Professor Turner-Stokes after she had spoken to members of Mr Barnor’s treating team. The judgment records that she did not visit the hospital, never examined Mr Barnor and had no contact with members of his family. Unlike the reports of two other external specialists, the Court said hers was not a conventional “second opinion” and was “of a different character.” Professor Turner-Stokes initially marked the document “without prejudice” to indicate it should not be seen by the family or the courts.
Professor Turner-Stokes recommended that references in Mr Barnor’s medical records to “prolonged disorder of consciousness” and “minimally conscious state” should be replaced with “terminal decline in consciousness” to open the door to end-of-life pathway without the need for further assessments. The Court’s judgment records that it was not informed whether the records were amended in line with that advice.
Turner-Stokes also advised the hospital that if it decided treatment was “futile or clinically inappropriate,” it was under no obligation to offer it and that this would not be a best-interests decision. She advised that, if the family disputed such a decision, the hospital was not obliged to bring the case before the Court of Protection. She also urged the clinical team to examine its records to ensure that the decision had been documented as a “clinical decision” rather than one based on Mr Barnor’s “best interests,” to avoid court proceedings.
Truner-Stokes advised to record decisions to refuse treatment as made by a “multidisciplinary team” (MDT) “so that no single individual finds themselves responsible for a decision”.
The Court of Appeal subsequently rejected the legal distinction on which that approach depended. It ruled that all decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatment must be made in the patient’s best interests. The Court held that there is “no carve out for clinical decisions” and that, where clinicians and the family disagree, the matter must be always referred to the Court of Protection.
The Court of Appeal allowed his daughter’s appeal and ordered that the case be urgently heard by a Court of Protection judge to decide whether dialysis was in Mr Barnor’s best interests. It stopped short of making an interim order compelling the Trust to provide dialysis in the meantime. Tragically, Mr Barnor died on 27 February 2026, the morning before the final hearing scheduled in the Court of Protection.
Because of the importance of the legal issues at stake, the Supreme Court nonetheless granted permission to appeal the decision both to the Trust and to the family. Both appeals are to be heard together at a two-day hearing on 12-13 January 2027.
In the meantime, the London South Coroner has ordered an investigation into the circumstances of Mr Barnor’s death and is expected to hold a public inquest in 2027.
FHR’s judgment: “futile” life to be ended by withdrawing food and fluids
FHR suffered a catastrophic brain injury in 2020. After living at home for nearly five years under his mother’s care, he was moved to a care home in 2025 for what the family understood would be a temporary assessment. He was not returned home, and his mother was prevented from visiting him for approximately 16 months.
Since being removed from his home, FHR has experienced serious deterioration in his health, including repeated emergency hospital admissions, infections and episodes of sepsis. His family maintain that he had previously been stable and content at home, surrounded by those who love him.
At a four-day hearing in August, expert evidence was given that FHR was not suffering from pain or distress and that there remained a possibility of improvement in his brain function. A neurorehabilitation expert reported observing him smile in response to his father speaking about football and Arsenal.
Another expert observed what was described as an “emotional response” when his father spoke to him about God and prayed with him.
Despite the opposition of FHR’s family and the position previously reached by his treating clinicians at a best-interests meeting, Mr Justice McKendrick ruled that continuing clinically assisted nutrition and hydration was contrary to FHR’s best interests. The judge concluded that the treatment should be withdrawn, a step which the evidence before the court indicated would lead to FHR’s death within one to three weeks.
On 18 September, the Court of Appeal has granted “stay of execution” until 2 October pending the family’s appeal. The hearing in the Court of Appeal is expected to take place in the next two weeks.