The government has ordered an independent inquiry after nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of the murder of seven babies and attempting to kill six others in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The Department of Health said the inquiry would investigate the “wider circumstances around what happened at the Countess of Chester Hospital”, including how concerns raised by clinicians over Letby were dealt with.
The inquiry will also look at what actions were taken by regulators and the wider NHS, with a focus on “lessons that can be learned quickly”.
The parents of twin babies attacked by Lucy Letby said they felt “very, very let down” by executives at the hospital, believing health bosses “could have stopped” the nurse taking “our joy, our happiness”.
The newborn boys, known as Child L and Child M, had to be resuscitated by doctors after Letby tried to murder them at the Countess of Chester hospital in Chester in April 2016.
Letby, who has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six, poisoned two-day-old Child L with insulin before injecting his brother with air. Doctors saved the boys, who are now seven, but Child M was left with permanent brain damage as a result of the attack, the trial at Manchester crown court was told.
The baby, identified only as Child E, was one of the victims of Lucy Letby, who has been found guilty of seven counts of both murder and attempted murder over the course of 12 months, from June 2015 to June 2016. She was found not guilty of two attempted murder charges, and the jury could not reach verdicts on a further six counts of the same charge.
Nine months of evidence involving the cases of 17 babies - premature newborns, twins, triplets - seven of them died, and ten survived - under the care of nurse Letby.
Judge Mr Justice Goss will sentence her at a later date, but the cowardly Letby has already said she will choose not to attend the hearing.
She faces life behind bars for the abominable offences.
There has been nothing to suggest that Susan and John were anything but loving parents to Letby, who was raised as an only child in a 1930s semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac.
The couple still own the same house and would holiday regularly in Torquay, with Letby going with them until her arrest five years ago.
They will now have to come to terms with the fact that their daughter is a convicted murderer.
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