It is a peculiar kind of justice system in which the Crown can grant mercy to Ruth Ellis, a killer who has been dead for decades, while Lucy Letby — a woman still alive and imprisoned after a conviction that growing numbers of specialists now dispute — remains behind bars as the legal machinery moves with painful slowness.
Those who challenge the Lucy Letby case argue that the prosecution was never built on clear, direct evidence, but on a succession of complex and increasingly contested theories about how the alleged crimes could have happened. As those claims have been tested in public against medical scrutiny and hard data, the once-gripping narrative has begun to loosen its hold. Even the Crown Prosecution Service has declined to pursue further charges against her.
So why is Lucy Letby still waiting for the courts to act? The question becomes harder to ignore with each passing week. Recently, my colleague Kathryn Knight reported in The Mail on Sunday the striking account of Jessica, a baby whose parents say Letby — later portrayed as a monstrous serial killer — was in fact the nurse who twice stepped in to help save their daughter’s life.
Now, a distressing BBC Radio 4 investigation has raised fresh concerns, with several other parents describing deeply troubling experiences at the same hospital, the Countess of Chester.
Those families’ complaints had no connection to Lucy Letby, whom they say they never encountered. It is also worth recalling the assessment of Dr Shoo Lee, the internationally respected neonatal expert, who said that if the evidence he had seen reflected conditions in a Canadian hospital, such a unit would have been closed down.
There were warnings from inside the hospital, too. In 2015, two years before Letby was suspended, a paediatrician at the Countess of Chester alerted senior management that the neonatal unit where she worked was chaotic, overburdened and unsafe for both babies and staff.
Dr Alison Timmis wrote to chief executive Tony Chambers in December 2015, saying staff were reduced to tears because they were being asked to care for more infants than the unit could safely manage.
Experts have raised questions about Lucy Letby’s convictions in cases involving babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital
She wrote: ‘Over the past few weeks I have seen several medical and nursing colleagues in tears… they get upset as they know that the care they are providing falls below their high standards.’ Staff were ‘chronically overworked’ and she felt no one was listening.
She continued: ‘This is not an exceptionally busy week… This is now our normal working pattern and it is not safe. Things are stretched thinner and thinner and are at breaking point. When things snap, the casualties will either be children’s lives or the mental and physical health of our staff.’
This would come as no surprise to many families who have had any experience of NHS maternity care in the last few years. The reports pile up. But the prosecution of Ms Letby sailed past this difficulty.
The Countess of Chester’s problems prosecutors argued, could be better explained by the presence of a determined serial killer of indescribable evil, secretly and ingeniously spreading death through the ward.
Now, direct evidence has emerged that the hospital was suffering from major problems during the period of Ms Letby’s supposed killings. BBC Radio 4’s File On Four, on Tuesday night, produced deeply harrowing accounts of things going badly wrong. I listened in mingled horror and astonishment – knowing as I do from members of my own family that maternity care in the NHS is in crisis – as I heard that that such things could happen in our supposedly advanced country.
I do hope that the new Health Secretary, Yvette Cooper, will take time to listen, too. The programme (which can easily be listened to online) interviewed several mothers who had suffered there. Their accounts are appalling.
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They speak of offhand care, absent nurses and doctors, complacency about symptoms. One mother was even told to clear up blood that had dripped on to the floor after her cannula accidentally came out.
Another, Freya Somerton, recalled being told that, as soon as she went into labour, ‘a consultant would be keeping a very close eye on her because of some health concerns and because her baby didn’t move much in pregnancy.’ But it didn’t happen.
Lucy Letby had been the health professional who twice intervened to save Jessica Bolton
A paediatrician had warned the hospital was chaotic, overstretched and unsafe for patients and staff two years before Ms Letby was suspended
‘We didn’t see a consultant, even though we were high risk.’ Then, during the labour, she says staff were reduced to using her face wipes to clean the ‘bright red blood everywhere’. ‘And I’m in quite a lot of pain at this point, really, as well. The baby’s head still hasn’t moved. We’re finally seen by, well, a registrar.’ I will not describe here the terrifying circumstances in which Freya says she finally met an actual consultant.
An inquest decided that her baby, Oscar, died of natural causes. She says he died of neglect.
Another mother interviewed, Cat Hughes, went through a gruelling experience, too. She had her second child at another hospital and says the care there was vastly better. She believes the outcome could have been much worse for her and her daughter than it actually was. And that has had a lasting impact on her.
It is clear that the quality of maternity care at this hospital was not properly considered in the Lucy Letby trial. The Prosecution’s lead medical expert witness, Dr Dewi Evans, told presenter Stephanie Hegarty that he did not see the full maternity notes for any of the babies whose deaths were included in the Letby trial.
Had he done so, he would have had a fuller picture of their grave health before Letby supposedly tampered with their treatment. As it was, having decided her guilt, the Prosecution made no use of the notes, and so they were not disclosed to the Defence.
Ms Hegarty remarks that the parents featured in her investigation ‘were not part of that trial and never encountered Letby’. But that is not the point. The point is that in such a place, no serial killer would be needed to explain an alarming number of baby deaths.
The BBC put the mothers’ complaints to the Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust. In response, Sue Pemberton, the Deputy Chief Executive, says she apologises unreservedly to the families who’ve had a poor experience in their care. She says: ‘We note that the cases being discussed relate to maternity care between 2015 and 2020 and that if families feel their concerns have not been addressed, I would urge them to contact the Trust.’ She added that the Trust has made significant improvements and it is now nationally accredited for its ‘family-integrated care approach’.
And let us hope that this and many other hospitals have improved as a result of growing public concern with maternity services. It is astonishing that so many billions of pounds can be spent on an NHS that has so much trouble performing this most essential task. But it is even more astonishing that Lucy Letby, after all these months of revelations, still has not had the appeal she so plainly ought to have.
