Public Inquiry into Lucy Letby Case to Release Findings on Hospital Failures

The findings from a public inquiry into how Lucy Letby was able to repeatedly murder and harm babies will be published later on Tuesday.

The Thirlwall Inquiry was set up to look into what happened at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016, while Letby was working as a nurse in the neonatal unit.

Letby, now 36, is serving 15 whole-life prison terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, including one baby whom she tried to murder twice.

The inquiry was not tasked with examining Letby's guilt. Instead, it investigated how concerns about the neonatal nurse were handled by the hospital and whether action could have been taken sooner to stop her.

Among the key questions the report may answer is whether any babies might have lived or avoided injury if action had been taken earlier.

Letby was moved from the neonatal unit to administrative duties in July 2016 after consultants expressed concerns about her to the hospital's executive team. But the inquiry has been examining whether alarm bells should have started ringing earlier, for example in June 2015 after three babies died in quick succession.

The inquiry, led by one of the country's most senior judges Lady Justice Thirlwall, involved six months of evidence and thousands of documents at a cost of more than £18.5m.

It is expected that the report will find there were significant safeguarding failures, and will recommend changes across the NHS.

The chairwoman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) - the only organisation with the power to send Letby's case back to the Court of Appeal - has told the BBC the CCRC would be paying close attention to the report.

Letby has previously been denied permission to appeal against her convictions on two occasions.

Her defence lawyer Mark McDonald told BBC Newsnight on Monday he had submitted "nearly 30 expert reports to the CCRC really undermining the whole safety of the convictions" - and that it was "more evidence" than "any other case" in the CCRC's history.

He added: "If she is innocent, as I believe, as 30-odd experts believe, then everything that has gone before the inquiry and every recommendation has operated on the wrong premise."

McDonald also said he "fundamentally disagreed" that his case had been undermined after two experts quit his team.

It emerged on Monday that that Prof Geoff Chase, from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and chemical engineer Helen Shannon, had withdrawn from Letby's defence team, after claiming some of the evidence being put forward was inconsistent with the available evidence and science.

McDonald told Newsnight he was "sad that they've gone" but insisted those experts still believed "Lucy Letby is innocent".

"What they're saying is: 'We think our argument's better than your argument and therefore we're coming out of it'."