Streeting says ‘waging a campaign’ on Lucy Letby’s innocence is ‘not right’

Wes Streeting has said he will believe Lucy Letby’s conviction for killing and attempting to kill babies is fair unless a court decides otherwise.

The Health Secretary said that “waging a campaign” on her potential innocence is “not the right thing to do”.

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

She lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal – in May for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and in October for the attempted murder of a baby girl which she was convicted of by a different jury at a retrial.

A panel of international medical experts concluded that bad medical care and natural causes led to the deaths of babies said to have been harmed by the neonatal nurse.

Mark McDonald, the barrister leading Letby’s legal team, has described the panel’s findings as a “gamechanger”.

Mr Streeting was asked on LBC about his previous comments that speculation on the former nurse’s innocence was “crass and insensitive”.

“Well, it is still the case that Lucy Letby is convicted of the crimes she was accused of. I know there is a campaign being waged, including by her legal team … and including some of my parliamentary colleagues,” he said.

The panel of 14 neonatologists and paediatric specialists led by retired Canadian medic Dr Shoo Lee presented what they called an “impartial evidence-based report” at a two-hour press conference earlier this month.

MP Sir David Davis was at the event and described Letby’s convictions as “one of the major injustices of modern times”.

But Mr Streeting urged campaigners and anyone involved in “the court of public opinion” to look to the established legal process if they think there has been a wrongful conviction.

“I would ask people to consider those grieving parents who’ve lost their babies.

“I still think that waging a campaign in this way in the wake of these convictions is not the right thing to do.

“I still think there is a judicial process to follow.”

Mr Streeting said it is “not a political campaign, it’s a legal process”.

He added: “Until I’m told otherwise by the courts of this land, then I continue to stand by the view that there’s been a fair conviction here until the courts determine otherwise.”

Dr Lee said the panel had detected a number of medical problems at the Countess of Chester Hospital where Letby worked and that the hospital would have been shut down if it was in his homeland of Canada.

“In our opinion, the medical opinion, the medical evidence doesn’t support murder in any of these babies – just natural causes and bad medical care,” he said at the press conference.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, has started to assess Letby’s case, which is said to involve a “significant volume of complicated evidence”.

The independent body said it was not possible at present to determine how long it will take to review the application from Letby’s legal team.