‘We took too long’: Jeremy Hunt apologizes to families of Letby’s victims

Jeremy Hunt has said it took “too long” for ministers to introduce medical examiners to investigate deaths in the NHS, as he apologized to the families of Lucy Letby’s victims.

Giving evidence at the Thirlwall inquiry on Thursday, the former health secretary said he had “ultimate responsibility” for the NHS when Letby committed her “appalling crime” of killing babies at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2015 and 2016.

“It happened under my watch as Health Secretary and while you do not have direct personal responsibility for everything that happens in every department of the NHS, you do have ultimate responsibility for the NHS,” he said.

“To the extent that lessons were not learned from previous investigations that could have been, or if the right systems were not in place that could have prevented this horrible tragedy, then I bear ultimate responsibility and would like to apologize to the families for this incident put down. everything that didn’t happen that could possibly have prevented such a heinous crime.”

The inquiry, led by Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall, is investigating the circumstances surrounding the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others by Letby in the hospital’s neonatal unit.

The former nurse, 35, is serving 15 life sentences but maintains her innocence. Her legal team is preparing a legal challenge to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Hunt, who was health secretary from 2012 to 2018, said his government took “too long” to introduce independent medical researchers into the NHS after they were first proposed in 2004, six years before the Conservatives came to power came.

Medical examiners are senior doctors who independently investigate deaths that are not investigated by coroners. They were widely introduced last Septembertwenty years after they were first proposed as a result of the Harold Shipman inquiry in 2004, and then again by the Francis inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire scandal in 2013.

The proposals were accepted by David Cameron’s government in 2014, but funding was not agreed until nine years later. “One of the things that could possibly have meant that what happened at the Countess of Chester was noticed earlier and the dots were joined would have been to have medical examiners,” Hunt said.

The senior Tory MP said he accepted the medical examiner proposal in 2014 and commissioned a pilot study between 2016 and 2018. However, he said the plan was never funded until it arrived on his desk at the Treasury Department in 2023, when he was chancellor.

Hunt added, “I think it’s something that I consider one of those things that has taken too long to implement.”

Giving evidence at Liverpool Town Hall, Hunt said cases of intentional harm in the NHS are not being spotted as quickly as they should be because the thousands of avoidable deaths each year are not being properly dealt with.

Patient Safety Watch, a group chaired by Hunt, estimates there are around 13,500 avoidable deaths in the NHS every year. Part of the problem, he said, was a “culture” in which doctors felt they would not be supported by the NHS if they were involved in cases of avoidable deaths.

“When you have the egregious cases – the Shipmans or the Letbys – they are less likely to be noticed when there are so many preventable deaths happening,” Hunt said. “At the same time, it is important for medical examiners that, tragically, there are occasionally malicious actors and you have to keep that in mind all the time.

“But they would become much clearer and more visible if we had a much better structure of preventable deaths caused by people who are really doing the best they can.”

The inquiry, which began in September, will hear the final evidence next week before issuing a report in late 2025.