We failed the babies”: Letby doctor’s grim confession

Letby doctor: We should have gone to police sooner

Senior consultant admits he and colleagues should have followed their suspicions as inquiry exposes catastrophic failures

A senior doctor who tried to raise concerns about Lucy Letby has admitted that he and his fellow consultants should have been “brave enough” to take their suspicions to police much earlier.

Dr John Gibbs, a consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital during the period when Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven others, said the findings of the Thirlwall Inquiry made for “grim reading”.

And he accepted that doctors themselves must take some collective responsibility for what happened.

“I wish we consultants had been brave enough to follow our suspicions and escalate things to the police earlier,” Gibbs told the BBC.

“When I say ‘we consultants’, I am responsible as well and if my other consultant colleagues didn't go to the police, I should have.”

A complete failure to protect babies

The 822-page Thirlwall report concluded that there had been a “complete failure to protect babies” on the neonatal unit.

It found that police should have been contacted earlier and that hospital managers repeatedly dismissed concerns raised by consultants.

Gibbs, who worked at the hospital from 1994 until his retirement, said managers had been given several opportunities to intervene while the deaths were occurring.

But the atmosphere became increasingly tense after Letby was moved away from the neonatal unit.

For around 11 months before police became involved, Gibbs said consultants were under intense pressure from hospital management.

Managers, he said, were determined that doctors should accept that Letby had been wrongly suspected.

The missed warning signs

The inquiry identified several missed opportunities, including a cluster of three baby deaths in June 2015.

Gibbs also highlighted the failure to recognise the significance of blood-test results suggesting that a baby had been poisoned with insulin in August that year.

One doctor missed the significance of the results when they returned from the laboratory.

But Gibbs said that was not simply one person's mistake.

Other consultants were on call and had opportunities to examine the baby's notes before the child eventually left the unit.

“We all had the opportunity to review the notes,” he said.

Gibbs told the BBC that he felt the medical team had failed the babies and apologised to their families.

Parents kept in the dark

The inquiry found that parents were kept unaware for years that their babies might have been deliberately harmed.

Lady Justice Thirlwall described the lack of consideration shown to the families as “reprehensible”.

Hospital managers conducted several internal reviews into the rise in infant deaths during 2015 and 2016, but Cheshire Police were not invited to investigate until May 2017.

Letby remained at the hospital until her arrest more than a year later.

The inquiry has now recommended major changes to neonatal care, including CCTV covering cots and incubators and tighter controls over access to insulin.

Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has said officials will urgently develop plans for live-streaming cameras on England's baby wards.

Letby still maintains her innocence

Letby was convicted in 2023 and is serving 15 whole-life terms. She has twice been denied permission to appeal.

However, the Criminal Cases Review Commission is examining her convictions after concerns about aspects of the evidence and the case have continued to be raised.

Gibbs said he found continuing claims that Letby had been wrongly convicted “frustrating and difficult”, particularly what he described as misinformation circulating online.

But he said the CCRC review was nevertheless important because some of the people questioning aspects of the case were serious academics and medical experts.

“I haven't changed my mind that I think Lucy Letby is guilty,” he said.

For Gibbs, however, the central lesson of the inquiry is not simply about one nurse.

It is about what happened when warning signs appeared — and why the people who saw them did not act quickly enough.

The most uncomfortable question left by the inquiry may therefore be not simply what happened to the babies, but how many opportunities there were to stop it.

SOURCE