Letby's father 'threatened guns to my head', hospital boss claims
by LIZ HULL · Mail OnlineThe boss of the hospital where Lucy Letby murdered babies praised her 'resilience' and told her he 'had her back,' a public inquiry heard yesterday.
Tony Chambers was the £160,000-a-year chief executive of the Countess of Chester Hospital when the neo-natal nurse murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven more over a 13-month killing spree.
Speaking publicly for the first time yesterday, the NHS manager admitted he told Letby she had been 'vindicated' and would be allowed back to work on the neo-natal unit - five months after she had been redeployed into a clerical role following doctors' concerns she was harming patients.
Mr Chambers made the 'commitment' during an unusual meeting with Letby and her parents, three days before Christmas, in 2016.
Minutes also showed he twice said: 'Your resilience Lucy, you astound me.'
Questioned about why he had made the assurance, when investigations into the cause of the unexpected baby deaths remained ongoing, Mr Chambers claimed he only did so to 'take the heat' out of an 'increasingly difficult relationship' that had developed between the hospital and Letby's father, John, 78.
He said the meeting was held to discuss Letby's employment grievance, which had been concluded in her favour, but Mr Letby was 'very angry' and was 'threatening guns to my head' because he was upset about the way his daughter had been treated.
'Letby's family, it's fair to say, were very upset and very angry about how they felt she had treated unfairly by the Trust,' Mr Chambers said.
'Letby's father was making threats that would have made an already difficult situation worse.
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'He was threatening GMC referrals for the doctors, threatening guns to my head and all sorts of things.'
The inquiry has heard that Mr Letby wanted Dr Stephen Brearey, the lead consultant on the unit, and Dr Ravi Jayaram, the head of children's services, 'instantly' sacked because of the allegations they'd made against his daughter.
Mr Chambers met with Lucy Letby again to discuss the consultants' apology to her a couple of months later.
He said there was 'no doubt' she felt 'incredibly aggrieved' and asked him for reassurances that nothing negative would go on her nursing record about her redeployment.
Mr Chambers told Letby: 'Lucy, don't worry, we've got your back.'
Asked about why he made that remark, Mr Chambers admitted it was 'clumsy language' but again insisted his desire was simply not to 'escalate' a febrile situation with her father, who he described as 'pulling the strings.'
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'He wasn't present at this meeting, but you got a sense of his presence,' Mr Chambers said.
But Nicholas de la Poer KC, counsel for the inquiry, pointed out that he also told Letby, wrongly, that she had been 'vindicated.'
Mr Chambers maintained that neither external review had pointed to unnatural causes for the baby deaths and denied that, with hindsight, he had been 'manipulated' and 'controlled' by a serial killer.
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Mr de la Poer said: 'It was an attempt by Letby to control and to go on the offensive and she succeeded in recruiting you to that, do you agree?
He replied: 'No, I don't think so at all. The only thing Letby wanted was an acknowledgement she'd been treated unfairly…and to go back to a job she loved.'
The hospital chief, who began his career in the NHS as a nurse, in 1995, has been described by other witnesses to the inquiry as 'intimidating,' 'emotional' and 'aggressive.'
He began by apologising to the families of babies killed and harmed 'for the pain that may have been prolonged' by his decisions, and his evidence was peppered with robust exchanges with Mr de la Poer, who repeatedly had to ask Mr Chambers to focus on answering his specific questions.
Mr Chambers admitted the hospital's systems failed and 'there were opportunities missed to take earlier steps to identify what was happening.'
But he had to be asked six times to pinpoint what he considered to be his biggest 'personal' failure.
Initially, he suggested it wasn't a 'personal failure' on his part, and that 'processes' and 'governance' in the hospital failed because the spike in unexpected deaths was not escalated up through the hospital's committee system or discussed with the board until after June 2016 – after Letby murdered her final two victims.
He said as the chief executive he was the 'accountable officer' and responsible for the 'delivery of safe care' but added: 'As the chief executive of a large hospital, with 4,000 staff, you are very much reliant upon other people, the four or five layers of governance to do their jobs.'
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However, eventually he accepted he needed to take some responsibility for poor communication with the families of babies killed by Letby, who were kept in the dark about what was going on.
When police were finally called in, in May 2017, Mr Chambers told officers that managers 'felt that the explanations for what had happened do not lie in a single place or cause and are certainly not criminal.'
But he denied downplaying the consultants' concerns or 'discouraging' the police investigation.
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, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, is expected to sit until early 2025, with findings published by late autumn of that year.