Thirlwall Inquiry into Lucy Letby Case

That is the, uh, final report of the Thirlwall Inquiry.

This is the public inquiry into, uh, the children being

murdered and harmed by Lucy Letby.

Now, she is, I know a lot of people don't like this,

she is a convicted

murderer. She is serving 15 whole life prison terms

for murdering

seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, including one baby who she

tried to murder twice. Um, uh, this is between 2015

and 2016 when she was working as a nurse in the neonatal

unit at the Countess of

Chester Hospital. Now, the Thirlwall Inquiry is not...

They've been very categorical. They are not looking at her guilt.

That's a matter for the Criminal Cases, uh, Review Commission.

Um, they are looking into that, and th- and that, and that commission will be

looking at the Thirlwall Inquiry report.

Mm.

Uh, but, um,

the, the, the, the Lady Justice Thirlwall is, uh,

six months of evidence,

thousands of documents. It's cost 18 million quid.

These things always cost absurd amounts of money.

Um, it's a m- damn sight quicker than most public

inquiries though.

Uh, and basically she's looking at how, how, you know,

complaints or concerns about the number of deaths in this neonatal unit were

handled, whether there were specific complaints about Lucy Letby,

and, and, and

what action could've been taken sooner to stop her, to stop the deaths.

Now, there've been claims that actually these were, you know,

by others saying, you

know, this, uh, huge number of campaigners-

Mm

... including some seriously good medical, world-class medical experts saying

they believe a, a number of these murders, or if not all of these murders, were

actually not murders, uh, and, and were, um, and were as a

result of failings in the hospital.

There was, you know, sewage in, uh, i- i- n- nearby and, and, and

poor, you know, very, very newly born babies were, were,

were basically not getting

the treatment they needed in a safe environment.

However, however, that, um, that is not being looked at.

But what is gonna be looked at is whether or not any babies could have

lived or

avoided injury if action had been taken earlier.

And this is one of the key things, is that the death rate really early on

was, was, you know, deaths in two weeks

was what they would expect in a year.

That should immediately... We've had inquiry after inquiry into this

stuff.

That should immediately, alarm bells, that should go straight to the Department

of

Health. Right, let's start an inquiry straight away.

Yeah.

What is going on? What, what could be the factors why this

is happening?

Um,

c- c- concerns from doctors being...

A new number of consultants going to the hospital and then being forced to

apologize to Lucy Letby-

Yeah

... over their accusations that, "Look, we think she's the only nurse who's on

duty

every time this happens. We think there's some suspicious

behavior." Um, uh,

abject failures by every person in senior positions in the

hospital. Again and again, these people, they get off scot-free, do they not?

We've seen there re- there are some criminal inquiries,

investigations go

o- on into, uh, failures, uh, by senior figures, so obviously no one

wants to prejudice any of that. But nevertheless,

the usual thing we're gonna

discover is,

you know, lessons from previous inquiries weren't

learned, more could've been done,

management abject failures, systems abject failures, and just no

lessons ever learned from anything, and none of the, uh,

recommendations from all the previous inquiries to where things have gone wrong

in

the NHS-

Mm-hmm

... ever being implemented by hospital bosses

and managers.

I mean, I dis- I, I haven't lost a baby, and these

parents have lost babies. Whether they were murdered or whether,

you know, uh,

legally their children were murdered-

Yeah

... to, to the, the fact that the NHS completely fails

again and again and again is, is criminal in itself.

Mm. And this is one of the things that really needs to be borne in mind

because I believe that Lucy Letby is guilty.

It was the longest trial in English history.

Th- a lot of evidence was presented.

A lot of the claims that are made on the other side, that this

was just a case of

knitting together some extraneous statistics to, to damn her unnecessarily

just don't really hold up to scrutiny-

They didn't, yeah

... the more that you read about the case.

Um, that being said, that doesn't mean

that there isn't still a huge problem with

the standard of maternity care-

Yeah

... in this country, and I think that's part of the reason

which, uh, aside from

the people who've got really wrapped up in the sort of Letbyist position, shall we

say, um, people have some grain of doubt

is because people

will have gone through, um, NHS maternity services.

Yeah.

They will have noticed just how ropey it can be, which again is not any knock on

the, on the nurses, the vast majority of which

are not Lucy Letbys-

Mm

... by any stretch of the imagination.

Uh, but that just that i- one could imagine, even if

not horrors on this scale, children kind of falling through the

gap because of just how poor the, the care can be-

E- even, even if a n-

... because of systemic failures

... even if a nurse is incompetent or a doctor is incompetent,

we've seen again and

again in the NHS, no action is taken-

Yeah

... to keep people alive, which is surely more

important than anything. That's literally the job.

You would think.

I, I, I find it,

i- I mean, it is intolerable. Uh, and we really, really, really need

some people who are in charge of these sort of organizations to go to prison.

We have got to focus minds so that these things are stopped

in their tracks much, much sooner.

Um-