Doctor at Lucy Letby hospital warned of 'Harold Shipman situation' in 2016, inquiry hears
2 December 2024, 14:06
A doctor had warned in June 2016 that the rise in baby deaths on the ward where Lucy Letby worked was "a Beverley Allitt / Shipman situation", a public inquiry has heard.
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Letby is serving 15 whole life terms for murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven others between June 2015 and June 2016 while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Harold Shipman, a GP from Greater Manchester, was jailed in 2000 for murdering 15 of his patients. All of the victims were women.
A later inquiry found Shipman killed an estimated 250 people throughout his career in medicine, from 1971 to 1998.
The 'Angel of Death' Allitt was convicted of murdering four infants and attempting to kill three more as a children's nurse in 1991.
In a hospital board meeting on 30 June 2016, Dr Jim McCormack, is recorded as saying: "This is a Beverley Allitt / Shipman situation.”
Sir Duncan Nichol - the former chairman of the Countess of Chester Hospital - has told the Thirlwall Inquiry he does not recall the remark, despite attending the meeting along with hospital executives and other doctors.
The inquiry, which is not a criminal one, is investigating how the hospital handled Letby's case.
Read more: Lucy Letby's father threatened 'guns to my head' during meeting, says hospital boss
Sir Duncan was also asked about a comment in a board meeting a month later in which one of the unit's paediatricians called his suspicions over Letby the “elephant in the room”.
He said he recalled the use of the phrase by Dr Ravi Jayaram but that he was influenced by the paediatrician noting police would need "hard evidence" to begin an investigation.
He added that the hospital's then-medical director Ian Harvey had "drawn our attention to the possibility that multiple factors" lay behind the rise in deaths.
Sir Duncan was also asked about a board meeting in January 2017, in which the then-medical director, Ian Harvey, recommended that the board should be “invited to consider assisting the staff member’s return to work on the neonatal unit”.
Unlike at the previous board meeting, the consultants were not present.
Rachel Langdale KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked: "Do you think as a board it might have been helpful for you to have the consultants’ views of the adequacy of the RCPCH report?"
Sir Duncan: "Yes, I do, absolutely. I regard it as personally a big failure on my part”
In May, Sir Duncan sent a letter to doctors saying he was "deeply sorry" for not intervening sooner.
