Doctor who worked with Lucy Letby 'ashamed' for failing to protect babies from killer nurse

Doctors were growing increasingly concerned about the link between Letby and dying babies at the hospital, but thought the problem would be dealt with by NHS bosses

A senior doctor who worked alongside Lucy Letby said he is "ashamed" that he failed to protect babies from the serial killer nurse.

Consultant paediatrician Dr John Gibbs apologised to parents of Letby's 14 victims as he arrived at the Thirlwall Inquiry today (Tues). The inquiry, chaired by Lady Justice Thirlwall is examining how the twisted nurse was able to go on a year-long killing spree while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital's neonatal unit.

The now retired medic said: "I deeply regret and I am ashamed that I failed to protect the babies from harm by Letby, but I do understand that the parents concerned would probably prefer explanations rather than apologies."

He said he and fellow doctors should have called the police in early 2016 before Letby went on to attack other infants including two triplet boys she killed in June that year. Dr Gibbs said Letby's name first came up as a "common factor" in relation to the collapses of three babies in June 2015.

But he had no suspicions that deliberate harm was being caused at that time. He said: "It had been felt she had been unlucky to have been involved in a number of incidents. It can happen to any of us and it happened to me during my career, that you have a bad run. But then that stops happening if it's just an unfortunate coincidence."

But by the start of 2016 the doctor said he was becoming 'more concerned' about the link between Letby and baby deaths on the unit. Dr Gibbs said: "We were trying to make sense of the number of collapses and deaths that were happening, and realising Letby was around for many of them, not all of them."

The consultant said it wasn't until he saw an external review of the deaths in February 2016 that the "full enormity of it all hit me". He said: "It identified some suboptimal care issues but none of them thought to be significant enough to have caused any of the deaths."

However at the time there was a "very firm pushback" from senior nurses that suspicions about Letby were "totally wrong". It was subsequently thought the problem would be "best managed" by the hospital's senior executives.

Dr Gibbs added: "I did listen to nurses. The strong assertion from nurses influenced me but didn't convince me, and no-one on the unit through that time seemed to have seen any harm to a patient. Also, post-mortems had been done that didn't seem to reveal any harm having been caused to patients."

He said it was his understanding that Dr Stephen Brearey had told hospital bosses that they suspected Letby was deliberately harming babies in May 2016. It was then fed back to the concerns doctors that "no decision had been made but senior managers would consider the problem".

Dr Gibbs added: "That could have been a trigger, it should have been a trigger, that we bypass the managers and went to the police. We failed to do that." Following a meeting with the hospital chief executive, Tony Chambers, the doctors were made to apologise to Letby for 'upsetting' her and she remained on the unit in a non patient role.

But by April 2017 the hospital had instructed a barrister to see if there was enough reason to involve the police. The following month detectives were called in and Letby was first arrested in July 2018.

Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted 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.

The inquiry is expected to sit at Liverpool Town Hall until early next year, with findings published by late autumn 2025.