The chief executive of the Countess of Chester Hospital was worried about a “wrongful conviction” after Lucy Letby was arrested, a public inquiry has heard.
Tony Chambers was said to have had concerns about Letby’s initial detention by Cheshire Constabulary in July 2018 over several unexplained and unexpected collapses of babies in the hospital’s neonatal unit, according to Dr Susan Gilby.
Dr Gilby joined the Countess of Chester as the new deputy chief executive and medical director weeks after Letby’s arrest, and said she had a “quite bizarre” discussion with Mr Chambers at that time.
Giving evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry into the events surrounding Letby’s crimes, Dr Gilby said she expected the hospital’s executive team would be “absolutely reeling” that a staff member had been arrested on suspicion of committing multiple murders and attempted murders “under their watch”.
She said: “What I found, and what Tony wanted to discuss with me, was his concern that actually he still believed, despite the arrest, that no deliberate harm had been caused.
“He kept repeating that there was no single cause found, and I said to him ‘well it’s not for you to find the cause, you have unexpected and unexplained collapses and deaths of patients and even one of those is a cause of concern’.
“And he just was very focused on the worry that the paediatricians may have caused this nurse harm, and his worry was a wrongful conviction.
“But he was still confident, even though she had been arrested, there would be no progress and there wouldn’t ultimately be a charge.”
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Letby was moved out of the neonatal unit to non-clinical duties in June 2016, shortly after consultant paediatricians told bosses they feared she may be deliberately harming babies.
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Hospital executives, including Mr Chambers and then medical director Ian Harvey, opted to commission several independent probes into the increased mortality. Police were not called in to investigate until May 2017.
Dr Gilby said she sensed that both men believed the paediatricians were wrong about their concerns, and that no evidence of deliberate harm had been found in their reviews.
“On a number of occasions it was said to me, [the paediatricians] were just looking for somebody to blame,” she said.
“They just felt the paediatricians were unable to accept they weren’t the best and so when outcomes were poor they were looking for somebody to blame.
“I was being given the impression that I had some ‘problem doctors’ that needed dealing with.”
Dr Gilby later replaced Mr Chambers, who stepped down in September 2018.
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Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.
Earlier this month an international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists told reporters that bad medical care and natural causes were the reasons for the collapses and deaths.
Their evidence has been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and Letby’s legal team hope her case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
The public inquiry will reconvene at Liverpool Town Hall on 17 March for closing submissions, and the findings of Lady Justice Thirlwall are expected this autumn.
