Dive centre boss 'in NHS swindle'

A diving centre boss swindled almost £250,000 from the NHS by claiming to have treated non-existent patients for cases of the bends, a court heard yesterday.

David Welsh and two accomplices billed health trusts across Britain for supposed treatment in the centre's decompression chamber, it was claimed.

Though genuine names, addresses, dates of birth and national insurance numbers were used, those people had never suffered the bends or been treated in the hyperbaric chamber, Plymouth crown court was told. Many of the bogus patients had taken diving courses at the centre, but eight of the "patients" told police they had never been diving and one man who had supposedly been treated for bends said he could not swim, the jury heard.

Company director Welsh, 49, from Plymouth, denies conspiracy to defraud the NHS with his brother Raymond, 46, from Essex, and diving instructor Michael Brass, 43, of Liverpool.

The case centres on bogus claims to 12 health trusts for 37 patients who were said to have been treated at Welsh's centre at Fort Bovisand, Plymouth, between 1998 and 2002.

Michael Fitton QC, prosecuting, told the jury: "Hyperbaric treatment is complicated and expensive because the facilities are complex and have to be maintained."

Fitton said it was a "simple fraud", adding: "As long as it appeared on the face of it to be in order, the NHS paid out readily. It is very easy money. It was a brazen dishonesty."

He added: "We do not suggest real divers with real conditions were not also treated, but we are dealing here with a fraud arising from cases where there was no illness and no bends." The bends is a condition suffered by divers who come up from the deep too quickly, allowing nitrogen bubbles to form in the blood.

David Welsh and Brass also deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice with diver James Chandler, 42, from Liverpool.