Good morning. Today, just over a year after the jury delivered its verdicts in the case of R v Letby, we begin hearings in this public inquiry, set up by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 19 October last year.
In about ten minutes, I will ask Ms Langdale, King’s Counsel, Counsel to the Inquiry, to begin her opening statement. This will take Ms Langdale and Mr de la Poer, King’s Counsel, until the end of tomorrow. On Thursday and Friday we will hear short opening statements from the advocates for Core Participants. None of the opening statements is evidence, but rather an indication of what the Inquiry is going to be invited to consider in the course of the coming months.
I’m not going to repeat what I said in my opening remarks at the end of November last year, nor what I said in the preliminary hearing in this year. Those remarks are on the record and can be found on the Inquiry’s website, along with a clear statement to the Inquiry’s terms of reference. At the heart of this Inquiry are the babies who died, who were injured and their parents.
I do not presume to describe the feelings and emotions that those parents have already experienced, nor those that lie ahead. But I will remind you of what has happened since the birth of their children.
First, each parent celebrated the birth of each child. Then, when things seemed to be going well for these tiny babies, each one of them collapsed, suddenly and unexpectedly. Some of the babies recovered, some survived, but with lifelong consequences. Some died.
Deaths and injuries occurred in 2015 and in 2016. The parents were told that natural causes were the reason for the death or lifelong difficulties. And so each parent grieved the loss of a new life and all that it promised and lived with that profound sorrow.
In 2018, so two or three years later, they learned that their babies may have been deliberately harmed; a nurse who’d been looking after their babies in hospital had been arrested. In November 2020, she was charged with murder and attempted murder. Nearly three years later she was convicted of seven counts of murder and seven of attempted murder, seven or eight years after those babies had been born. She was acquitted of two counts of attempted murder and the jury couldn’t agree about a further six counts of attempted murder.
Some parents sat through the entire lengthy criminal trial.
It was against the background of that trial that this Inquiry was announced in September last year, after a very few weeks during which consultation took place, including with the parents and with me, the terms of reference were set, by the then Secretary of State.
The Inquiry bears my surname so that the parents do not see repeatedly the name of the person who has been convicted of killing and maiming their children in every reference to the Inquiry, in the hearing room, on the website, in the media.
The verdicts did not bring immediate closure for the parents on the question of what happened to their babies. First, there was an application for leave to appeal against the convictions, which was refused and then renewed.
It was heard earlier this year over three days by a full Court of Appeal. The court dismissed the application. In the meantime, a retrial took place in respect of one count of attempted murder, one of those upon which the jury had not reached a verdict in the first trial.
She was convicted. She has lodged a further application for leave to appeal that conviction.
On the day after that conviction, the Court of Appeal released a lengthy judgment dismissing her application. It runs to 58 pages. It explains in detail why the Court of Appeal dismissed the application for leave to appeal. For the parents, that judgment marked a watershed. They could now turn their attention to this Inquiry, which is as important today as it was the day it was set up. The Inquiries Act 2005 requires me to act fairly and to avoid unnecessary cost. The terms of reference require me to conduct the Inquiry as swiftly as possible.
The aim of the Inquiry team was to begin the hearings no later than September of 2024, and to complete them at latest in early 2025. We have worked to that end, as have the legal teams, for all the Core Participants. As a result, we are now able to hear the three parts of the Inquiry in their natural sequence: A, B, C.
After the hearings, it will be for me to write the report. I cannot tell now precisely how long that will take; much depends on the nature and volume of the evidence. I can say that I expect the report to be published by late autumn next year.
I should add that the reason we are able to begin the hearings today is because of the extraordinary help and assistance the Inquiry has received from Liverpool City Council and its staff. At short notice, they have made it possible for the openings to be heard in this Council Chamber and for the evidence to be heard in other parts of this historic building in due course. Like the Inquiry team, they have put the parents at the heart of their planning and I am very grateful to them.
I mentioned a few moments ago that the decision of the Court of Appeal was a watershed. At last, the parents had finality, or so it seemed. But it was not to be.
In the months since the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment, there has been a huge outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions. So far as I’m aware, it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts of the evidence have been selected and criticised, as has the conduct of the defence at trial, about which those defence lawyers can say nothing.
All of this noise has caused enormous additional distress to the parents who have already suffered far too much. I make it absolutely clear that it’s not for me as Chair of this public inquiry to set about reviewing the convictions. The Court of Appeal has done that, with a very clear result.
The convictions stand.
It’s my responsibility to focus the Inquiry on the questions asked in the terms of reference, and leading counsel will tell us how that is to be done in a few moments.
The parents of the babies named on the indictment have awaited for years for the answers to their questions. It’s time to get on with this Inquiry.