Tony Chambers, who was formerly in charge of the hospital where Lucy Letby killed seven babies, has spoken publicly for the first time about his role. The former chief executive of the Countess of Chester Hospital gave evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall on Wednesday, beginning with an apology to the families of Letby’s victims. Report by Jonesia. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Have you got anything to say to the family except for babies?
00:29So right at the outset I just want to offer my heartfelt condolences to all
00:58the families whose babies are at the heart of this inquiry.
01:04What was your most significant personal failure do you think?
01:10One of the very enduring examples if you like is our ability to have communicated what was
01:25a very complex set of messages with information that was unclear and therefore I do believe
01:33that there was, on reflection, the communications with the families could have and should have
01:44been better.
01:45At some point on the afternoon of the 24th of June of 2016, so a full five days before
01:52you were told, the Director of Nursing, Alison Kelly, was told that the two most senior
02:02consultants in the paediatric unit were concerned that a nurse may have murdered a baby the
02:12day before.
02:13I don't believe I knew about these matters before the 29th of June because as you correctly
02:22described these are very important, very concerning matters and you can see that the
02:29actions that I took from that were very speedy and there were many, many meetings that came
02:38after the 29th of June.
02:39So my assumption is that I didn't know and should I have known?
02:43I don't know where I was, I haven't got my diary, I don't know if I was in the hospital
02:49but I think it's a fair assessment that I perhaps should have been told.
02:53Do you agree or disagree that there was a rational basis for them to be suspicious that
03:00serious crimes had been committed?
03:03Based on what was being presented there I had no reason to believe that there was no
03:08rational basis for what they were saying but what I do know from my experience across the
03:15NHS is that we wouldn't jump to criminality as a causal factor, we would want to explore
03:28a broader set of answers to those very difficult questions.
03:34Yes, and so do you agree that it appears the plan is going to be that the police are going
03:38to be spoken to on the 31st of March?
03:41Yes, that's right.
03:46Okay, now we know that the police were not spoken to on the 31st of March, do you know
03:53why they weren't?
03:58There was never any intention to not go to the police.
04:04The decision had been made at the meeting on the 27th of March.
04:09What we needed help and advice on is this was a serious escalation of matters and we
04:15needed to be clear around how we would manage that next step, what would help the police,
04:25what would help us, so we sought independent advice.
04:30Letby's family, it's fair to say, were very upset and very angry about how they felt she'd
04:41been treated unfairly by the Trust.
04:45I'm prepared to accept that we had not been as open and honest with her at the time.
04:54As you can see when you read the notes from this meeting, Letby's father was very angry,
05:02he was making threats, he was making threats that would have just made an already difficult
05:13situation even worse by threatening GMC referrals for the doctors, he's threatening guns to
05:20my head and all sorts of things.
05:32And we're just going to pick out some of the things that Letby was saying in the first instance.
05:41Do you see towards the bottom that a conversation begins about
05:46who the apology is going to be from?
05:50And if we go over the page we'll see what Letby then says, I expect four apologies.
06:00Now, did you feel in this meeting that Letby was trying to take control of what was going on?
06:12I think that was an attempt on her behalf, yes, I think she was.
06:18We can see here we will get an apology from all, do you think that is something that you
06:23said to Letby, that you would get an apology from everybody?
06:27Well I think earlier in the meeting I think that was already a position that had been agreed upon.
06:33The fourth to last entry, last sentence, Lucy don't worry, we've got your back.
06:42Yeah, clumsy language, as I've said all along the intention here was to avoid any possible
06:54escalation and eight years on with what we know and we look at this,
07:01these are the kind of things that you know you didn't get right.