Lucy Letby murders show that doctors’ authority must be restored

How could this have happened? A pretty girl, seemingly popular and gregarious, who likes teddy bears and other cuddly toys, has two pussy-cats, Tigger and Smudge, and wants to be a neonatal nurse. What could be more appropriate, more delightful? Yet the human psyche is an unexplored continent: at times a dark one. The word “evil” is often used too readily, but sometimes it is the mot juste. Many of our forebears believed in diabolic possession. Well, something similar took place in that hospital ward.

There are thoughts that lie too deep for politics.  But one point is worth making and arises from the courtroom testimony: the status of hospital consultants. Think back to the day of “Doctor in the House” when Sir Lancelot Spratt and his ilk ruled their hospitals, their sway untrammelled and unchallenged. Although this may have been a work of fiction, it reflected reality. Consultants were masters of all they surveyed.

Fast forward to 1980. Sir John Hoskyns arrives in 10 Downing St as Head of the Policy Unit. He concludes that the NHS often did not know what it was doing and why. In area health authority A, a given course of treatment would cost X. In authority B next door, it would be three times as much with no discernible difference in outcome or patient satisfaction. John Hoskyns decreed that the health service needed a proper central nervous system. Unfortunately, the installation contract went to Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory.

An immense bureaucratic monster was created and the rule of the senior medics gave way to the rule of officials. A couple of consultants were very unhappy about Nurse Letby but their doubts were brushed aside. Indeed, they were virtually threatened with unpleasant professional consequences unless they shut up.

Hindsight is easy: real life, messy and complex. One can understand why the authorities were reluctant to accept that this charming nurse was killing her patients. But consultants are there to take difficult decisions – often life or death ones. It is hard to believe that they would have rushed to judgment, and if they decided that something was going drastically wrong, action should have been taken.

No doubt this will all be considered by the enquiry, though there could be a danger. It would be desirable to reaffirm the authority of the doctors. It might also seem wise to create safeguards in the unlikely event that another nurse is transformed into the angel of death. The danger is that risk aversion could create a new layer of bureaucratic obfuscation. 

There is no need for the inquiry to hurry. We can say without complacency that this situation is unlikely to recur any time soon. Those in charge should concentrate on thinking everything through. Their deliberations should be weighty and thorough: speed is a lesser priority. 

Although it is probably not a matter for the inquiry, there is another question: the most interesting one of all. Why did that girl go so wrong? She will presumably be spending the rest of her life in custody. Perhaps over time, someone will be able to reach into her mind. It might be a priest, a padre, a social worker or a prison officer who could gain her confidence, induce her to face the truth, and tell the truth – in order to help the rest of us understand why evil became her good.

It may be that she will refuse and spend long decades locked in two prisons, the physical one plus the psychological one: self-incarceration in a state of psychotic denial. But the right sort of clergyman might try. It should not be a second Frank Longford, who only succeeded in persuading Myra Hindley that she had a legitimate grievance. That could never have been true. In the unlikely event that I had been a senior Roman Catholic cleric, I would have instructed dear old Frank to cease and desist. By distracting her from the essential task of prayer and repentance, he would have been further imperilling her already blighted soul. 

But a stalwart and self-confident Christian – there are still some – might assure her that no human wickedness is utterly beyond redemption. He could lead Lucy Letby along her own Calvary, of tears and abasement, to throw herself on the mercy of a loving God and beg forgiveness from her Redeemer.

I am not myself a Christian. Yet without Christianity, the flaws and wounds in the human condition are incurable, and it needs the theology as well as the ethic. Prime Minister Salisbury once said that those who believed that the Christian ethic could survive the death of Christian theology by more than a couple of generations were deluding themselves. There is nothing in subsequent history to refute him. Nor would the decline of Christianity refute Manicheanism. It would merely leave the Devil in possession of the field. Indeed, the Devil is not doing so badly as it is.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life