There is no pain more heartbreaking than that of a parent who has lost a child. At that moment, light turns to darkness; life will never be the same again.
We all remember how vulnerable premature babies are during tests by neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, known as “the angel of death”.
She has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
After two emotionally charged trials, Letby will spend the rest of his life in prison – and rightly so, if he is guilty and the evidence against him is solid.
But is it?
Former nurse Lucy Letby has been convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Letby, 33, was arrested at her home last August and, after two emotionally charged trials, will spend the rest of her life in prison.
In recent weeks, a number of distinguished commentators and experts – including doctors, academics, statisticians, nurses and even a former cabinet minister (whose name was not released) “with a legal background” – have begun to raise concerns that this may not be the case.
As many have pointed out, including my colleague Peter Hitchens on these pages on Saturday, no one saw Letby kill or attempt to kill a baby. There is no forensic evidence to prove his guilt.
Central to the prosecution’s case is the suggestion that Letby killed seven babies by air embolism, injecting air into them through their feeding tubes.
Two Crown witnesses, basing their opinions on a 30-year-old research document, suggested that might have been his method.
However, the Canadian academic who wrote the original article was not called as a prosecution witness and has since cast doubt on whether his work will be used in the trial.
As for the idea that Letby injects air into the stomachs of newborns through their tiny nasogastric feeding tubes, this could have involved repeatedly removing the syringe, refilling it with air, and then reinserting it.
Is it really likely that this would be a serial killer’s preferred technique, when anyone could have caught her doing it at any time?
A diagram placing Letby at the scene when the deaths of those seven babies occurred is the second most substantial piece of “evidence” against her.
However, leading statisticians have called this approach fallacious. It seems to me to be a pattern that could be repeated in any hospital ward where a cluster of deaths occurs.
For example, a report last year concluded that 201 newborns may have died at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust due to a lack of adequate care.
If a similar graph were drawn, could it be proven that a nurse was present at several of the deaths? And would that be enough to send that nurse to prison for the rest of her life?
John O’Quigley, a professor of statistics in the Department of Statistical Sciences at University College London, has said that the only conclusion that can be drawn from the “Letby diagram” is that when Letby was on duty, Letby was on duty. Nothing more.
Sadly, cases of infant deaths are not uncommon in the NHS. However, they do not necessarily point to child killers, but rather to deep systemic failings that fail parents time and time again.
Nadine is a former nurse and says maternity care, and women’s healthcare in general, has always been the poor relation in the Health Service.
But I don’t want to go too far into the evidentiary details of this case. The fact is that, from the beginning, I felt deeply uncomfortable for several reasons.
I gave birth to two of my three daughters at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where Letby later worked. The care I received with my firstborn was cruel, unsympathetic and unprofessional. A traumatic rather than joyful experience.
As a former nurse and, until recently, the minister directly responsible for maternity and neonatal services and general patient safety, I have spoken to many parents who once held their longed-for but lifeless baby in their arms.
I have never forgotten those conversations.
The UK’s infant mortality rate is 30 per cent higher than the EU average, and many babies have died due to catastrophic failures by the NHS services that were supposed to protect them.
During the trial, Lucy Letby’s own lawyer reassured the jury: “It is important to make clear that this case has nothing to do with the NHS in general.”
Given that four independent investigations have recently been carried out into the worrying rise in infant mortality in maternity and neonatal units across the country, perhaps this should have been done.
Maternity care – and women’s health care in general – has always been the poor relation of the Health Service.
That’s why, as a minister, I launched the Women’s Health Strategy to ensure women could receive better treatment in a sector that is predominantly run by men. In the face of resistance from the NHS, I stood up and ordered an independent inquiry into East Kent University Hospitals NHS Trust after several babies had died and concerned families had raised concerns.
In 2022, that investigation found that up to 45 babies who had died in the neonatal unit over an 11-year period could have survived if they had received the appropriate level of care.
Yet these problems continue: just this week, a survey by the Birth Trauma Association found that two in five women giving birth are subjected to surgical interventions, such as scissor incisions, without being informed, despite this being a legal requirement.
And staffing in some hospitals remains dangerously low.
Letby herself worked as one of two fully qualified neonatal nurses at the Countess of Chester, in a unit repeatedly described as understaffed and chaotically run.
Last summer, when Letby’s first trial was taking place, I was in the hospital for an operation. The nurses attending to me talked about nothing but her case.
Letby’s supporters demonstrate outside the Supreme Court during his appeal trial. They believe Letby is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
The unit was quiet, and during a sleepless night of chatting with the nurses, I learned two things: almost all of them were waiting with bated breath for the latest edition of the Daily Mail podcast on the Letby saga, and none of the nurses on that unit believed she was guilty.
They whispered it, they were afraid to admit it, but they were sure of it. There was something about it that didn’t seem right.
“She was the most qualified nurse on the unit, so of course she was the one they turned to for the most critically ill babies, the ones most likely to die,” one nurse said.
The jury heard that once Letby was moved out of the unit, the number of deaths there decreased.
However, at the same time a decision was made to downgrade the unit to one that would no longer admit high-risk babies. So what appears to be compelling evidence against Letby could have a much more innocent explanation.
Conversations with the nurses who cared for me also touched on notes Letby had written to herself that were found in her home.
A note in her diary read: “I don’t deserve to live” and included the lines: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to take care of them,” “I’m a horrible, evil person,” and, in capital letters, “I’m evil, I did this.”
Viewed from the perspective of a conscientious nurse who took her calling seriously, they read like the ravings of someone who felt tortured by the situation she found herself in and desperate that she could not save the patients in her care.
She was overworked and depended on her too much.
There was also nothing in Letby’s background that would characterize her as a serial killer.
She seemed a well-educated, experienced and mentally healthy woman: a woman who had wanted to train as a nurse since she was a teenager, who had good friends and was respected by her colleagues.
She appeared to come from a shrinking cohort of people who pursue nursing as a vocation, not a job. Even the judge described her as a “conscientious, hard-working, knowledgeable, confident and professional nurse” before handing down the sentence.
Has the British justice system sentenced a young woman to life in prison to save the tarnished reputation of the National Health Service? Were the nurses who treated me last year’s instincts correct? Why has Lucy Letby been denied the right to appeal?
These are questions I would like to see answered. Justice may depend on it.
