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The police force that conducted the investigation into the nurse Lucy Letby made “egregious” failures and did not follow official guidance or best professional practice, David Davis has said in parliament.
Speaking in the final parliamentary debate before the Easter recess, the Conservative former cabinet minister made a series of criticisms of Cheshire police and said Letby has suffered a miscarriage of justice. Davis said Cheshire police failed to appoint appropriate medical and statistics experts, and pursue all possible lines of inquiry into why babies died and collapsed on the “failing” neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester hospital in 2015-16.
The backbench opposition MP said his latest intervention in the case is based on reviews by two former police detectives: former Det Supt Stuart Clifton, who led the investigation into Beverley Allitt, a nurse who was convicted in 1993 of murdering four children, attempting to murder another three and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to a further six; and Steve Watts, a former assistant chief constable who wrote national police guidelines on the investigation of deaths in healthcare settings.
“Both policemen believed that Letby was guilty,” Davis said. “That is, until they examined the hard facts. Both now agree. They both believe that the Letby case is a serious miscarriage of justice.”
Davis criticised the police for launching a criminal investigation after a meeting with two consultants in the Chester hospital, then focusing too narrowly on suspicion against Letby rather than examining all factors.
“This investigation was initiated by a single meeting with consultants who had themselves been involved in seriously inadequate care of these babies,” he said.
The force then failed to follow official advice to appoint a panel of experts, and stood down the medical statistician Prof Jane Hutton after initially asking her to examine the increase in deaths. Police then “failed to conduct proper due diligence” on the experts they did appoint, led by the retired paediatrician, Dr Dewi Evans, Davis said.
Letby was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more in 2015 and 2016, when she worked as a nurse in the neonatal unit of the Chester hospital. She was sentenced to 15 whole-life sentences, and the court of appeal refused her permission to appeal.
Since the convictions, dozens of leading UK and international medical experts have examined the evidence and argued that the babies died or collapsed due to natural causes and poor care on the unit, and that there was no evidence of murders nor any other deliberate harm.
Letby’s lawyer, Mark McDonald, has applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which examines possible miscarriages of justice, to have her case sent back to the court of appeal. The CCRC is reviewing the application.
Davis argued that Cheshire police failed to heed the lessons from their own previous investigation of Sally Clark, a mother who in 1999 was wrongly convicted of killing her two sons. Clark was in prison for three years on a life sentence for murder before her convictions, based on flawed statistical evidence by a prosecution expert medical witness, was quashed.
Davis said he will be calling on the director of public prosecutions to “review the behaviour” of both the CPS and Cheshire police.
Replying for the government, policing minister Sarah Jones said Letby had been convicted following “a proper process” and that Cheshire police had been given “some of the highest ratings in the country” by the police inspectorate.
“I just want to end by reminding the house this country uses due process, there has been due process, that has been followed in the convictions of Lucy Letby with a trial by jury, and upheld on appeal,” Jones said. “And I remain confident of that and also of the effectiveness of the Cheshire constabulary.”
