Hospital executives join call to suspend Letby inquiry

Former senior hospital executives have called for the public inquiry into the events surrounding the crimes of Lucy Letby to be suspended.

- K I M P I L L I N G

Inquiry chair Lady Justice Thirlwall said she had received the request last month from counsel for the management team at Countess of Chester Hospital at the time that Letby attacked babies in 2015 and 2016.

The Thirlwall Inquiry is hearing closing submissions from the various interested parties this week, including the families of Letby’s victims, following the conclusion of the evidence at the hearings which began last September.

Lawyers representing chief executive Tony Chambers, medical director Ian Harvey, director of nursing Alison Kelly and HR director Sue Hodkinson made the application weeks after an international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists said that bad medical care and natural causes were the reasons for the collapses and deaths on the neonatal unit.

Those medical findings have been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice. Letby’s legal team hope her case will eventually be referred back to the Court of Appeal.