Compensation awards.

We revealed how 16-year-old Marc Young died on an operating theatre table at North Tyneside General Hospital.

The social-care student, of North Shields, had been taken into hospital after complaining of sickness, pains and diarrhoea in April 2002.

Medics thought it was appendicitis or a stomach bug and took him into an operating theatre where he died of a heart attack. A probe on behalf of the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust revealed clinicians did not spot the seriousness of his condition. Marc's family were given pounds 10,000 by the NHS Litigation Authority last year.

Mum Barbara, 42, said: "It was never about the money but more about highlighting the point.

"We were told we'd get pounds 10,000 because we wouldn't have to pay anything to look after him as he'd died."

In April 2002, Lewis Cunningham, then six, from Whitley Bay, was awarded pounds 3.67m after he was brain damaged at birth because of a medical error during his delivery at North Tyneside General Hospital in August 1995.

It was ruled doctors and midwives had failed to recognise he was becoming increasingly distressed during delivery, and drugs aimed at helping the birth had only made his condition worse.

In 2004, 13-year-old Kayleigh Jobes, from Southwick, Sunderland, received a six-figure lump sum after a long-running dispute. The cerebral palsy sufferer, who needs a wheelchair, was awarded the cash as part of an out-of-court settlement following claims her birth at Sunderland Royal Hospital, then Sunderland General, had been "unacceptably delayed", causing the condition.