Lawyers representing families of some of the babies attacked by English serial killer Lucy Letby have said that a non-statutory public inquiry into her killing spree is “inadequate”.
The British government ordered an independent inquiry after Letby (33) was convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more during her shifts on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in England between 2015 and 2016.
But Slater and Gordon, which is representing two of the families involved, said that a non-statutory inquiry “is not good enough” and needs to have a “statutory basis to have real teeth”.
“The inquiry announced by the [UK] Department of Health is inadequate,” said Richard Scorer, head of abuse law and public inquiries, and Yvonne Agnew, head of the firm’s Cardiff clinical negligence department, in a joint statement.
“As a non-statutory inquiry, it does not have the power to compel witnesses to provide evidence or production of documents and must rely on the goodwill of those involved to share their testimony.
“This is not good enough.
“The failings here are very serious and an inquiry needs to have a statutory basis to have real teeth.”
It comes after Samantha Dixon, the local MP for Chester, also raised concerns about a non-statutory inquiry.
“I do have some concerns about the risks around a non-statutory inquiry in that people are not obliged to attend and to give evidence,” she told BBC Breakfast.
“So I have replied to him and asked him why he has come to that decision, given that there are these risks and that we need full answers.”
She added: “A non-statutory inquiry almost relies on the goodwill of witnesses to attend. They are not obliged to attend, they’re not compelled to attend.”
The Countess of Chester Hospital is under mounting pressure over why the nurse was not removed from the neonatal unit sooner.
It comes as police said they are reviewing the care of 4,000 babies who were admitted to the Countess of Chester – and also Liverpool Women’s Hospital when Letby had two work placements – going as far back as 2012.
The families of her victims have said they have been left “heartbroken, devastated, angry and feel numb” by her actions.
But is expected they will not see Letby when she is sentenced on Monday after the serial killer has indicated she will not take part in the hearing at Manchester Crown Court.
Lawyers representing some of the families have vowed to continue their search for answers.
There were 13 deaths on the neonatal unit where Letby worked over a one-year period, the BBC reported, which is five times the usual rate, and the nurse was on duty for all of them.
She could have been stopped as early as June 2015 when executives held a meeting where it was agreed an external investigation into the deaths would be held but it never was, the broadcaster said.
In October that year, after seven babies had died, a link was made between all the fatal collapses and Letby, whom prosecutors described as a “constant malevolent presence” in the care of the infants.
Despite this the link was believed to be co-incidental.
Dr Susan Gilby, who took over as the hospital’s medical director a month after Letby was arrested, told the BBC: “The paediatricians were discussing the terrible nights on call that they were having, one of them said ‘every time that this is happening to me, that I am being called in for these catastrophic events which were unexpected and unexplained, Lucy Letby is there, and then somebody else said ‘yes I found that’, and then someone else had the same response.”
Paediatrician Dr Stephen Brearey, who blew the whistle on Letby in 2015, told the Guardian the hospital had been “negligent” in its handling of the killings.
Consultants wanted to go to the police but officers were not called and, in September 2016, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health was called to carry out a review of the unit, the BBC said.
It urged the trust to probe each death individually but this did not happen, it has been reported.
The killer nurse launched a grievance procedure against the paediatricians which found she had been “discriminated against and victimised”, and they were forced to write her an apology letter.
She was later taken off the neonatal unit that month following the deaths of two triplet boys.
She was still working at the trust when she was arrested at her semi-detached home in Westbourne Road, Chester, at 6am on July 3rd, 2018.
During searches of her address, a number of handwritten notes were discovered.
On one green Post-it note, she wrote “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”, “I am a horrible evil person” and in capital letters “I am evil I did this”.
