Lucy Letby: Call for police investigation into hospital bosses

Lucy Letby was told she would never be released from prison when she was sentenced on Monday

The chief prosecution witness in the murder trial of Lucy Letby has said hospital executives who failed to act should be investigated by police.

Dr Dewi Evans said Letby, who murdered seven babies and tried to kill six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital, "could have been stopped".

He said he would ask Cheshire Police to investigate hospital bosses for corporate manslaughter.

The trust said it would welcome an independent inquiry.

Meanwhile, a senior doctor who first raised concerns about Letby said NHS managers should be regulated in a similar way to doctors and nurses.

Dr Stephen Brearey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was "no apparent accountability" for managers' actions.

Neonatal nurse Letby deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin.

On Monday Letby, the UK's most prolific child serial killer in modern British history, was told she would spend the rest of her life behind bars.

Baby serial killer Lucy Letby

• Who is baby serial killer Lucy Letby?

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Dr Evans told BBC North West Tonight he believes some of the seven babies could have been saved had management acted more urgently on concerns raised by doctors at the hospital.

The retired consultant paediatrician, who gave evidence in court about each of Letby's 13 victims, said there were "a number of red flags available to the medical team and management once the medical team suspected there was something the matter and all of these were overlooked".

He said: "I think there were concerns raised by the consultants after the first three deaths. And no-one acted at that time."

Dr Dewi Evans said he would ask Cheshire Police to investigate the NHS executives' actions

Dr Evans also said a post-mortem examination should have been ordered on one of the babies, adding: "Another error occurred when no-one appreciated the significance of the high level of insulin found in the [baby's] blood."

He said "that should have alerted someone in the medical team to the fact that someone was poisoning this baby" and "if people had acted appropriately, she should have been stopped, at the latest, after their sixth case".

"It's not so much that they responded slowly," he said. "They didn't respond at all. And that's even worse."

"Whether the gross dereliction of duty of the management deserved to be explored at a criminal level is a matter I think that needs to be addressed by the police and the criminal justice system," he said.

Inside the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital

Dr Evans also called for a statutory investigation into the way management runs NHS hospitals.

"There were months and months of delays between {doctors] writing to their management asking for an urgent meeting and getting a response," Dr Evans said.

"So this is as bad as it gets. It really shows management in the NHS as not fit to look after patients and not fit to look after the nurses and doctors either."

Throughout the trial, Dr Evans said Letby "just sat there impassively" and "didn't get upset when parents and nurses and doctors were talking about the collapse of the babies".

But he said her medical notes "were of a very good standard".

"So this was a nurse who knew her stuff," he said. "And I think it's the fact that she knew her stuff is one reason why she'd got away with this for such a long time."

The Countess of Chester Hospital's acting chief executive, Jane Tomkinson, said the trust "welcomes the announcement of an independent inquiry by the Department of Health and Social Care".

"In addition, the trust will be supporting the ongoing investigation by Cheshire Police," Ms Tomkinson said.

"Due to ongoing legal considerations, it would not be appropriate for the trust to make any further comment at this time."

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