Tory MP calls for Lucy Letby re-trail and tells MPs child killer could be cleared

A former Tory minister has demanded a retrial for Lucy Letby – claiming the convicted baby killer will be cleared.

Sir David Davis claimed there was no “hard evidence” implicating Letby and the case against her was “built on a poor understanding of probabilities”. Letby, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders for murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others.

Sir David told MPs: “If, as I believe it will, a retrial clears Lucy Letby she shall be released in her 30s, not in her 50s.” He went on: “There was no hard evidence against Letby, nobody saw her do anything untoward. The doctor’s gut feeling was based on a coincidence – she was on shift for a number of deaths, and this is important, although far from all of them, far from all of them. It was built on a poor understanding of probabilities, which could translate later into an influential but spectacularly flawed piece of evidence.”

Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones said it was “not appropriate” for the Government to get involved in court cases. Sir David said Letby’s case “horrified the nation” and that it “seemed clear a nurse had turned into a serial killer”. But in an adjournment debate in the Commons he said: “There is case in justice, in my view, for a retrial. But there is a problem. One of the problems we face is that much of the evidence was available at the time.

“What I have described is an expert analysis of the case notes, which were there at the time, but it was simply not presented to the jury. This means the Court of Appeal can dismiss it, basically saying the defence should have presented it at the initial trial. It is in essence saying, ‘if your defence team weren’t good enough to present this evidence, hard luck you stay banged up for life’. Now that may be judicially convenient, but it’s not justice.” Lawyers for Letby last month said they would make a fresh bid to challenge her convictions on the grounds that the lead prosecution medical expert at her trial was “not reliable”.

The Tory MP said he “initially accepted the tabloid characterisation of Letby as an evil monster”, but changed his view after speaking to “may experts”. They convinced him that “false analyses and diagnoses” had been used to “persuade a lay jury” to find Letby guilty. Sir David compared Letby to other famous miscarriages of justice including the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the Stockwell Six. He added: “These people were all exonerated, after those who doubted their guilt, who initially met the same fierce public pushback now facing those who questioned Letby’s guilt.”

But Labour frontbencher Ms Davies-Jones said it is “an important principle of the rule of law that the Government does not interfere with judicial decisions”. She added: “It is not appropriate for me or the Government to comment on judicial processes nor the reliability of convictions or evidence.”

Ms Davies-Jones later told the Commons that Letby could apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission if she believed she had been wrongly convicted. Letby was convicted of attacking infants in her care at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit by various means, including injecting air via feeding tubes, injecting air into the bloodstream, assault, force feeding with milk and poisoning with insulin. 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.