Rishi Sunak vows to carry judge-led inquiry into baby-killing nurse Lucy Letby
Families and docs have been stepping up calls for for a statutory inquiry, with full authorized energy to compel witnesses to come back ahead, after the 33-year-old nurse was sentenced to a whole-life time period on Monday for the homicide of seven infants and the tried murders of six extra.
The Government had promised a non-statutory inquiry, and the Prime Minister didn’t affirm that it will now be upgraded.
But he advised reporters: “Whatever form the inquiry takes, I believe it is important that it is judge-led so that it has a strong independent voice to get to the bottom of what happened.
“Obviously this was one of the most despicable, horrific crimes in our history. And it’s really important that we get answers particularly for the families of the victims. And of course my thoughts are with them,” Mr Sunak added.
Lucy Letby Trial – In footage
“The Health Secretary [Steve Barclay] is taking that work forward, speaking [to] them to make sure we understand what they need and want, and how best we can address that.”
Mr Barclay mentioned this week that the households ought to have “full confidence” sooner or later inquiry, and that it will “fully investigate” how NHS whistleblowers have been handled.
Senior docs on the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit, the place Letby carried out her killing spree in 2015 and 2016, raised issues for months earlier than she was lastly taken off frontline duties.
Failures to cope with the docs’ complaints “more likely than not” led to the deaths of infants, in response to Dr Susan Gilby, who took over because the hospital’s medical director a month after Letby was arrested in 2018.
But a marketing campaign group calling itself Science on Trial has launched a fundraising drive to fund any enchantment that the nurse lodges, calling her trial the “greatest miscarriage of justice that the UK has ever witnessed”.