It would be impossible to count the number of people impacted by the crimes of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, who has received a whole-of-life prison term for each of the seven murders and six attempted murders of babies in 2015 and 2016. Those most affected were the families of those babies. They went through hours of trepidation each time she was arrested, undoubtedly felt anger when she was finally charged, then endured months of horrific evidence recounting what happened to their children in the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit under Letby’s care.
There are now verdicts on some but not all cases, following what must have been a very difficult exercise of deliberation by the jury. Not all questions have been answered by these verdicts, however. During the trial, evidence was presented from the defence of failings at the National Health Service (NHS) Trust – Letby describing being used as a scapegoat for failings by the NHS to care for these children.
The question turns now to what this evidence means – not only for the families affected directly by her crimes but for everyone in Britain who is a service user of the NHS.
In my role as solicitor for seven of the families in the civil cases, we will look to the timeline of events inside the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Trust, where Lucy Letby worked and where her crimes were carried out, and the concerns raised by the consultant paediatricians to their senior management.
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It would be wrong for me to comment on that evidence until we see it presented formally and the NHS is given the opportunity to respond. There certainly seems to be a picture of concerns being raised by clinical staff and those concerns being ignored, however. The request for an independent review of these concerns was pushed aside.
I do not believe it is the suggestion of anyone involved in the civil claims or from those paediatricians – who are now considered whistleblowers after speaking publicly of their concerns about management at Countess of Chester – that all deaths and episodes of harm would have been avoided had hospital officials acted sooner in response to the concerns.
[ Kathy Sheridan: What exactly did we expect the parents of Lucy Letby to do?Opens in new window ]
Police in Britain now intend to review babies cared for by Letby all the way back to 2012. But, again, there appears to be no suggestion that every episode of harm would have been prevented. The key here is to consider each piece of information reported to management by the clinical staff along a precise timeline and their own internal audits in that time.
What knowledge did the hospital officials have and what did they choose to do with it? These are questions that need to be answered.
Police have made clear they intend to review the medical records of 4,000 children across the two hospitals where Letby worked, the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital, as part of Operation Hummingbird. While there is no suggestion that Letby harmed each of these 4,000 children, it does leave some concern that these acts may have taken place well before the timeline considered in the recent trial.
Lucy Letby trial: what the jury heard
Presented by Bernice Harrison.
In tandem with Operation Hummingbird, the UK government must decide the form any public inquiry might take. The options are for an independent inquiry or a statutory inquiry. Both have merit and both have drawbacks. What really matters here is twofold; we have to bear in mind the families involved in these crimes trusted the NHS to look after their babies. They have undoubtedly lost confidence in the health service and will need continual reassurance that it is prepared to fully comply with an inquiry.
Should the British government choose to make the inquiry independent, this will mean witnesses are not compelled to give evidence. It will mean there is no mechanism to order disclosure of key documents. In effect, the families and the wider public will have to place a lot of faith in the willingness of the NHS to engage with the investigation.
Second, it is vital that a thorough investigation into the events at Countess of Chester is achieved by a process that is guaranteed to allow for a detailed investigation. This process must ensure all evidence is available to the inquiry. If we put the families through another lengthy process involving what happened to their children, and we give those concerned doctors an opportunity to present their concerns, and reach the end of that process without having considered key internal evidence from the NHS Trust, then the process is fruitless.
It has been widely reported maternity services across the UK are in crisis. Time and time again, we see evidence of management ignoring the concerns of clinicians.
It is vital that any inquiry moves with pace to ensure nothing that happened on that unit is ever repeated. We owe this to the families.
Tamlin Bolton, who is from Ireland, is a solicitor specialising in medical negligence with Switalskis Solicitors in the UK