Health minister Helen Whately gives a statement after nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies, and trying to kill six others, at the Countess of Chester Hospital. There were six more attempted murder charges. She was found not guilty of two and the jury was undecided on the remaining four. Report by Czubalam. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 My thoughts and sympathies are with the families who have lost babies or had babies injured
00:08 and the unbelievable heartbreak that they have been through and must be going through.
00:13 I think it's unimaginably hard to lose a baby or have a baby injured in any circumstances,
00:21 but clearly in these circumstances it's just hard to find the words to express what it must be like.
00:27 So my thoughts are with them and actually also with the staff at the Countess of Chester hospital
00:33 who must also be hugely affected by what has happened.
00:37 Now you asked me about the inquiry and the important thing here is that something like
00:44 this must never happen again and of course the NHS must learn lessons.
00:48 That's why the government is launching an inquiry to make sure that all the lessons that can be
00:54 learned will be learned and that all possible action is taken so that this can never happen
01:01 again. I particularly asked about the question about statutory versus non-statutory. One of the
01:07 things here is actually to make sure that this can be done at pace, action taken quickly and a
01:13 non-statutory inquiry is one that can happen more quickly and be more flexible to answer the
01:18 questions that need to be answered. I think this is one of the really shocking things that happened
01:25 is as you say that doctors repeatedly raised their concerns and that didn't lead to the action being
01:33 taken that you would have expected. This is one of the things that clearly the inquiry I think
01:39 should look into, that the chair of that inquiry will set the scope of it but that's definitely
01:45 something where there are questions to be answered. It's crucial that when any member of staff in
01:52 hospital raises concerns and whistleblows that they should be both supported in doing that and listened to.