O’Donnell told the inquiry that, at the end of 2024, he was asked to review thousands of incident reports raised by staff, some dating back to 2021.

He said he was instructed by a senior member of staff, who said: ‘We need to get these gone’.”

He said they included incidents involving self-harm, assaults on staff and racial abuse.

“The first thing that popped into my head was there’s an inquiry going on and they’re panicking about these because no-one’s looked at them – that was my first thought and that’s what I still think.”

Talking about the way the trust acted at the time, he said: “There wasn’t, ‘Can there be a thorough investigation of these and can you feed back?’ It was, ‘We need these gone, we need these processed and we need them gone.'”

O’Donnell said he initially closed some of the reports but stopped after becoming uncomfortable.

“I thought, I can’t put my name to this and say I’ve thoroughly investigated it because I haven’t,” he told the inquiry.

Asked what happened to the remaining reports, he said: “They sat on my dashboard for a very long time then disappeared one day. I don’t know whether they’ve been dealt with. I doubt it.”