Calls for an inquiry were first made by

In 2017, Essex Police launched ainto the deaths of 25 patients at nine mental health units, but there were no charges.

Police said the cases did not meet the "evidential threshold".In 2019, the PHSO published. It quoted a "systemic failure to tackle repeated and critical failings over an unacceptable period of time".

A year later, Melanie Leahy and 24 other families set up an online petition for an independent inquiry.About 105,000 people signed it, forcing a debate in Parliament.

In 2021, former Health Minister Nadine Dorries said a robust

, but it would not have full legal powers to compel staff witnesses to give evidence.“They do it because they can,” he shrugs. “They see no reason to stop.”

It was two years after the mass protests of 2020 that the police turned up for Dmitry Luksha. By then, he had imagined he was safe.“Those two years were my undoing,” he knows now, having spent 28 tough months in jail.

When he was released, unexpectedly, he thought he would stay in Belarus. But that was impossible.“I would jump whenever the lift opened. Or when a minibus with tinted windows pulled up. And there were so many armed police in the street,” Dmitry explains, from the safety of Warsaw where tens of thousands of other Belarusians now live, for the same reasons.