Box-ticking empires of waste are lacking in moral purpose

THE HORROR of Lucy Letby's crimes continues to send waves of shock across the nation. It is almost beyond comprehension that a woman employed to protect vulnerable infants should turn out to be an agent of torture and death.

- Leo McKinstry

But what makes her lethal sadism all the more chilling is the evidence that her managers at the Countess of Chester Hospital failed to take action against her, even as a string of doctors in the neonatal unit raised their concerns that Letby was inflicting terrible harm on the babies there.

In a sick inversion of morality, these officials showed more concern about preserving the hospital's reputation than the lives of the innocent. To that end, they not only painted Letby as a victim needing support rather than removal from the unit, but even turned their fire on the doctors, who had their careers threatened and their pleas for action dismissed.

Episodes like that make this one of the darkest scandals in modern British history. The Kafkaesque collapse in basic ethics and compassion has led to calls for a new separate, independent regulator so that hospital administrators have to comply with professional standards.

DR STEPHEN Brearey, who was one of the first to voice his suspicions about Letby, is an advocate of such a move, complaining that at present "there doesn't seem to be any system of accountability".