Hospital boss felt Lucy Letby was innocent, inquiry hears

A former hospital chief executive told his deputy he was worried about a "wrongful conviction" after the arrest of nurse Lucy Letby, a public inquiry has heard.

Tony Chambers made the comments in July 2018 after Letby was first detained by Cheshire Police following a series of unexpected collapses and deaths of babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

Dr Susan Gilby had just joined as deputy chief executive and medical director when she said Mr Chambers told her he was "confident" there would be no charges against Letby.

Dr Gilby, who took over as chief executive when Mr Chambers stepped down in September 2018, described the conversation to the Thirlwall Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall, which is examining the circumstances of Letby's offending.

Dr Gilby said she had been abroad when the nurse was arrested and expected to return to find the hospital's executive team "absolutely reeling".

However, she said Mr Chambers instead insisted on discussing his belief that "no deliberate harm had been caused".

"He kept repeating that there was no single cause found," she said.

"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."

Letby had been moved off the neonatal unit in June 2016 after consultant paediatricians made complaints to the hospital's senior managers.

Police were not called in to investigate until May 2017, after a number of independent reviews into the unit's increased mortality rate.

Dr Gilby said she found that senior executives including Mr Chambers and her predecessor as medical director, Dr Ian Harvey, were "very dismissive" of the consultants.

She told the inquiry: "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."

However Dr Gilby said she had a meeting with one of the doctors who raised the alarm, Dr Stephen Brearey.

She said a short way into that conversation "it became clear to me as a clinician that these were not clinically explicable collapses".

She said Dr Brearey said to her: "You've been here five minutes, you get it."

Dr Gilby added that the collapses were unlike anything she had ever seen or heard of in her clinical practice.

Asked about the wider running of the Countess of Chester before she worked there, she said: "Patients had become lost in the organisation.

"There were a lot of words said about the people we served but if you look at the actions and priorities of the board, they were all about efficiency."

Lady Justice Thirlwall, chairing the inquiry, has already stated it is not examining any questions about whether Letby was wrongfully convicted.

On 4 February an international panel of experts in neonatology and paediatrics held a press conference disputing that any babies were deliberately harmed by Letby.

Her legal team has submitted an application, including the panel's report, to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) which has the power to refer her case to the Court of Appeal.

The inquiry will hear closing submissions on 17 March and Lady Justice Thirlwall will publish her findings in Autumn.