Dan O'Donoghue
At Manchester Crown Court

After a short break, the court has resumed. Lucy Letby appears to be talking much more quietly than before. She has tears in her eyes as she answers questions from Nick Johnson KC.

He turns to baby C, who the jury have previously heard was born in "good condition" and stable after his premature birth in early June 2015.

The boy stopped breathing without warning on 13 June while being treated in the unit's nursery one.

Prosecutors have said Ms Letby, who was then designated nurse for a child in nursery three, was in his nursery at the time and caused his collapse by inserting air into his stomach via a nasogastric tube.

He was pronounced dead on 14 June.

We're having a change of staff here - Dan O'Donoghue will be telling us what's happening in court for the rest of the day.

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Nick Johnson KC says: "Do you accept that all the people who saw the skin discolouration, say they hadn’t seen that sort of thing before?"

Lucy Letby says: "I have to accept what they say, yes."

Johnson then adds: "Do you accept air was put into the IV lines of both children?" (Babies A and B).

Letby says: "No."

Johnson replies: "Or either of them?

Letby responds: "No."

Johnson asks: "Do you accept that you had the opportunity to access the lines of both children?"

Letby says: "Yes but I didn’t access the lines."

The court is shown a neonatal intensive care chart, a blood gas record, and medication forms relating to baby B.

Lucy Letby was not the baby's designated nurse at that time, but her signature is on these documents.

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Nick Johnson KC asks Lucy Letby to look at the lever-arch file which contains some of her police interviews.

He takes her to the section which includes an interview she did with detectives about baby B.

They asked her about the appearance of the baby's skin. She told police that it had a "rash appearance".

She now says she accepts there was skin "mottling".

Nick Johnson KC asks the nurse if she accepts it wasn't normal.

She answers: "It was more pronounced mottling, yes, and in view of what had happened with baby A we were very keen to act."

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Nick Johnson KC is standing with his arms folded.

He is looking across to his right, and down, at Lucy Letby who's wearing a black pinstriped suit in the witness box. Two female prison officers are with her.

Lucy Letby speaks fairly quietly.

She's sitting very still, with her hands clasped below the table of the witness box.

Nick Johnson KC shows the court medical records relating to baby B (who was in nursery one), which have Lucy Letby's signature on, even though the babies she was tasked with caring for that night were in a different room.

He says: "You had migrated back into nursery one hadn't you?"

Letby answers that some procedures needed to be signed off by two nurses, and that's why she was there.

Johnson challenges Letby: "You injected baby B with air, didn't you?"

She replies: "No I didn't."

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Nick Johnson KC is continuing to ask Lucy Letby about texting. "Were you bored?" he asks.

Letby replies: "No."

Then Johnson says: "As a matter of fact do you spend a lot of time texting when you're in nursery three?"

Letby says: "I text regardless of where I am on shift."

Johnson responds: "Even when you’re looking after an ITU (intensive care) baby?"

Letby says: "Yes, at times when they’re not needing care, and I think everyone would say the same if they were honest."

Nick Johnson KC shows the court a list of text messages which Lucy Letby sent to friends and colleagues whilst she was on shift.

He says: "I’m suggesting you were bored because you were engaging in chit chat on texts with friends."

Lucy Letby replies: "No that’s common practice on the ward, that's not unique to me."

Johnson adds: "I take it that staffing levels weren't an issue then?"

Lucy Letby says she can't speak for the other staff on the unit, but her babies were being adequately looked after at the time.

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Nick Johnson KC says that on the night of baby B's collapse, Lucy Letby was based in a different room within the unit. The baby was in nursery one (intensive care).

Nurse Letby was looking after two children in nursery three. Nick Johnson suggests that Lucy Letby had wanted to be based in nursery one.

He says: "You didn’t like being there (nursery three) did you?"

Letby answers: "That’s not accurate."

Johnson responds: "You were bored."

Letby says: "I’ve never been bored at work. I’ve never described my work as boring."

Nick Johnson KC moves on to ask the nurse about baby B - a girl, and the twin sister of baby A. It's alleged that Lucy Letby attempted to murder her after she had murdered her brother, in early June 2015.

Lucy Letby is asked if she remembers how devastated the twins' parents were after the death of baby A. She does.

She's asked if she remembers their father lying on the floor in grief. She says she does not remember this.

The court is shown a text message from Lucy Letby to a colleague on the day after baby A died.

In it she wrote: "Dad was on the floor crying saying 'please don’t take our baby away' when I took him to the mortuary, it's just heartbreaking."

The judge and the jury are in court too now so we can begin.

Nick Johnson KC is back on his feet.

He asks Lucy Letby if she wants to amend anything she said during the morning's evidence.

She says no.

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Lucy Letby is waiting in the witness box.

The lawyers have reassembled, and the babies' families have taken their places again.

Lucy Letby's parents are sitting across the aisle from them, just behind their daughter.

We're waiting for the judge, Mr Justice Goss.

A Section 45 order is a legal ruling made by a judge which bans publication of the identity of any witness, victim or defendant aged under 18 who appears at a magistrates' court or a crown court.

The ban includes reporting the young person's name, address, school, college or place of work - and any details that are likely to identify the person.

Photographs of the individual are banned as well.

The court has ordered that the babies and their parents in this case must not be identified, so each child has been named by a letter, from Child A to Child Q.

The rule applies to everyone, and relates to all reports of the case on radio, television, newspapers, magazines, online and social media.

It is a crime to breach a Section 45 order and can result in a prison sentence.

Recently the law changed to allow the streaming of a very specific part of a trial process: Judges delivering a sentence.

But the main part of a trial, where evidence is heard, can’t be filmed - in fact it’s illegal to take photographs in court.

The law, which has been in place for almost 100 years, is still rigorously enforced.

Authorities believe cameras could act as a distraction, be used to intimidate witnesses and deter people from giving evidence.

The same law bans sketching in court, so court artists have to draw from memory - making notes during hearings and leaving the courtroom to actually draw their pictures.

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Before they were sent out, the judge spoke to the jury about the likely length of the rest of the case.

He has now told them that it may last until the end of July. It began in October.

The court was told that in her police interview Lucy Letby said she didn't know what the dangers of injecting air were.

She says now that she meant she didn't know the exact pathological danger, but did know that ultimately it would end in death.

Nick Johnson KC: "Were you playing daft?"

Lucy Letby: "No, it’s something every nurse would know."

Nick Johnson KC: "Why didn’t you say something?"

Lucy Letby: "I know the ultimate outcome would be death - how that would appear in terms of symptoms for a baby - I don’t know."

Judith Moritz
Inside the courtroom

Lucy Letby says baby A had mottled skin, but it was not an abnormal discolouration. She says: "He was unusually pale, but in terms of the colour, it was not unusual."

Nick Johnson KC says: "The pathologist found an air bubble in baby A’s brain and lungs. Did you inject him with air?"

Lucy Letby replies: "No."

Johnson explains: "He found air bubbles in his blood vessels. Do you remember that?"

Letby says: "Yes."

Johnson adds: "Like babies D and O. That’s because you injected him with air didn’t you?"

Letby responds: "No."

The trial previously heard evidence from a doctor who said he'd observed very unusual patches on Baby A's skin at the time of his collapse.

Lucy Letby is asked by Nick Johnson KC: "Do you agree with that description that there were very unusual patches on his skin?"

Letby replies: "No."

Johnson then asks: "Are you disputing what the doctor saw?"

Letby says: "Yes."

Johnson then asks Letby if she's suggesting that the doctor is lying.

Her barrister, Ben Myers KC, interjects and says it's not appropriate to continually ask the nurse if she's accusing witnesses of lying.

The judge, Mr Justice Goss, tells Nick Johnson KC: "It’s ultimately a matter for the jury to decide whether he is lying, or she is lying, so I’m not going to permit you to ask that question anymore."

Nick Johnson KC asks about baby A - a boy twin - who Lucy Letby is accused of murdering in June 2015. She denies this (and all the charges).

Nick Johnson KC adds: "Is it the case that the staffing levels at the Countess of Chester Hospital contributed to Baby A’s death?"

Lucy Letby responds: "In part, yes."

She says she believes that the fact baby A spent four hours without fluids contributed to his death.

Lucy Letby says it was another nurse who had the access to baby A's tube lines. She does not accept that she was standing over the baby when he collapsed.