‘I’ve always had doubts’: Sarah Vine gives her verdict on Lucy Letby’s conviction as she discusses the case with Peter Hitchens on the Mail’s The Reaction podcast

Sarah Vine has admitted she always “had doubts” about the conviction of killer nurse Lucy Letby while speaking on the Mail’s talk show The Reaction.

Vine told viewers he had reservations about sentencing the 34-year-old, who was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven others, because much of the evidence was “circumstantial”.

Joining the mother-of-two, co-presenter Peter Hitchens agreed the trial was “full of assumptions about what might have happened” and questioned statistical claims.

Hitchens questioned whether it was possible that the babies’ deaths “were not the result of murder,” adding that the alleged methods Letby used to kill them were “fundamentally hypothetical.”

The Reaction hosts were discussing the Letby case as pundits and media outlets once again questioned her innocence, just weeks after a retrial found her guilty of attempted murder of a seventh infant known as Baby K.

Speaking about the case, Vine said: ‘Well, this week there’s been a resurgence of the Lucy Letby case. I find it fascinating. Tell me what you think.’

‘I mean, I actually raised the issue in September because I thought it was wrong and the more I looked at it the more wrong I thought it was.

Fascinatingly, in the long period of silence imposed by the second trial, Rachel Aviv of The New Yorker produced this astonishing article.

‘Now I must urge you to read it, because if you had doubts before, you will have much greater ones later.

Vine added: “I always had doubts because I felt the evidence was quite circumstantial.”

Hitchens then continued: “The problem is that it is entirely circumstantial and full of assumptions about what might have happened.

‘And also statistical claims that statisticians themselves, including the Royal Society of Statisticians, have pointed out are extremely dubious and probably wrong.

‘I think there is a case for the Criminal Cases Review Commission to take it up and ask the appeal court to reopen it because the Court of Appeal has already refused to let it go on appeal.

‘After reading the (Court of Appeal) judgment, I thought: ‘I’m not quite sure what it is that makes them so keen to avoid an appeal or why that would be a good idea.

“When the case is so controversial, why not appeal? What arguments can be given against it?”

Later in the episode, Vine and Hitchens discussed the King’s speech during the reopening of Parliament on Wednesday, in which the Labour Party outlined a flurry of around 40 bills.

Amid the usual pomp and ceremony, the King said ministers would press ahead with their controversial class-war plans to impose VAT on private school fees, which Hitchens called a “spiteful attack on private schools”.

Hitchens said: “It’s interesting that they’re so keen to do this, which will raise very little money and make almost no difference to state education, but which will make life incredibly difficult for many of those people who are on the edge of being able to afford independent education, and who now won’t be able to do so.

“It won’t hurt the rich, and they won’t care at all.”

Vine added: “No, they’ll just carry on.”

Hitchens continued: “It’s simply an act of spite against independent education and gives a very good indication of what kind of government this really is.”

Vine said: “I think it’s mostly against the middle class, because, as you say, the rich will have one less holiday. And that will be fine.”