Lucy Letby speculation causing families enormous stress, inquiry chair says

Comments on the validity of Lucy Letby’s convictions for murder and attempted murder have created “an enormous amount of stress” for the parents of her victims, a judge has said on the opening day of a public inquiry into events surrounding the deaths.

Letby, 34, was sentenced to 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.

The inquiry at Liverpool town hall will examine events at the Countess of Chester hospital’s neonatal unit where Letby was a nurse between 2015 and 2016.

Opening the hearings, Lady Justice Thirlwall said doubts cast on Letby’s convictions had come “entirely from people who were not at the trial”.

Thirlwall said it was not for her to review the convictions, and the court of appeal had done that with a “clear result”. Three senior judges denied Letby permission to appeal in a 58-page judgment published in May.

“In the months since the court of appeal judgment there has been a huge of outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions,” Thirlwall said. “So far as I’m aware it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts of the evidence has been selected and there has been criticism of the defence at the trial.

All of this noise has caused additional enormous stress for the parents who have suffered far too much. It’s not for me to set about reviewing the convictions. The court of appeal has done that with a very a clear result. The convictions stand.”

Thirlwall said that at the heart of the inquiry were “the babies who died and were injured, and their parents”. “I do not presume to describe the emotions those parents have already experienced and what lies ahead,” she said.

The counsel to the inquiry, Rachel Langdale KC, in her opening statement made reference to the serial killer nurse Beverley Allitt, who was convicted of four counts of murder, three of attempted murder and a further six of grievous bodily harm on children at the Grantham and Kesteven hospital in Lincolnshire in the 1990s.

Langdale said the inquiry had received a statement from the former health secretary Virginia Bottomley, who ordered an inquiry to establish the facts after Allitt’s crimes.

“Nevertheless, and distressingly, 25 years later another nurse working in another hospital killed and harmed babies in her care,” Langdale said.

She said the inquiry would hear that the crimes of Allitt formed part of the training course Letby underwent at the University of Chester.

Langdale said failure to take into account all the evidence could be damaging.

“There is a requirement in every case to take into account all of the evidence and to consider each piece of evidence in the context of all the other evidence. Medical or scientific evidence in the case should never be compartmentalised or examined in isolation,” she said.

“Those who do this will be less likely to see the picture as a whole, and if they do not see the picture as a whole, they may reach conclusions that are not only wrong but are speculative and damaging.”

The comments at the start of the long-awaited inquiry come after reports highlighting doubts over Letby’s convictions.

A group including some of the UK’s leading neonatal experts and professors of statistics called on the government to postpone or change the terms of the inquiry over the concerns.

At the weekend, legal representatives said reports calling into question Letby’s convictions had been upsetting for the families of the victims. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Tamlin Bolton said: “I can’t stress enough how upsetting that has been for all of the families that I represent.”