Jeremy Hunt: Lucy Letby's case must be re-examined
Jeremy Hunt has called for Lucy Letby's case to be urgently re-examined.
The former health secretary, who held the post when the neonatal nurse carried out her crimes, said new evidence 'raises serious and credible questions' about her case.
He added that questions around the safety of her conviction were not conspiracy theories from 'far-flung reaches of the internet' and said they needed addressing 'as a matter of urgency'.
Letby, 35, from Herefordshire, was convicted for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven others while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016.
After she was sentenced to 15 life terms in prison, the Thirlwall Inquiry was launched to discover how she was able to commit the crimes.
Many experts have since challenged the way evidence was presented to the jury during her trial, and a panel of world-leading experts have reviewed the medical notes and concluded that there were no malicious acts.
Writing in The Daily Mail, Mr Hunt insisted he was not saying Letby was innocent, adding that the pain of the victims' families 'must also be at the forefront of our minds'.
'But most of all they deserve the truth,' he said. 'And recently some have begun to cast doubt on what actually happened.
'I have now read a wide range of expert concerns about the conduct of the Letby criminal case.
'They are not conspiracy theories dredged up from far-flung reaches of the internet.'
Mr Hunt said the 'most disturbing' evidence was that of the 14 paediatric specialists, who ruled that the deaths or injuries of the newborns were down to natural causes or errors in medical care.
'Taken together – and it pains me to say it – this analysis raises serious and credible questions about the evidence presented in court, the robustness of expert testimony and the interpretation of statistical data.
'That is why I and parliamentary colleagues such as Sir David Davis now believe the time has come for these concerns to be addressed as a matter of urgency,' he added.
Appearing at the inquiry earlier this year, Mr Hunt apologised to the families of Letby's victims and said her crimes had been committed 'on [his] watch'.
Although her case has been referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), Mr Hunt warned that the organisation was 'hopelessly dysfunctional'.
The body, which is responsible for investigating potential miscarriages of justice and the only one that can refer cases to the Court of Appeal, has made headlines for its mishandling of high profile cases such as that of Andrew Malkinson.
The 59-year-old former security guard served 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit as chances to free him were repeatedly missed, leading to one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
Mr Hunt called for the CCRC to 'get its act together'.
'We owe it to the public, the families affected and the NHS to be absolutely sure that the convictions were sound, the process was fair and the evidence met the threshold we expect in any case – especially one of this gravity,' he added.
'Justice must be done and seen to be done. And that means the CCRC has to speed up their normally painfully slow process.'
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