CPS January 2026 decision — declining to pursue further charges
Prosecution claim
The CPS's January 2026 decision not to pursue 11 additional charges relating to 9 further babies is, on the Crown's framing, a neutral prosecutorial decision that does not affect the existing convictions. The CPS has confirmed explicitly that the decision has no effect on the existing convictions.
Counter-evidence
The significance of the decision is not in what it says about the existing convictions (nothing) but in what it says about the CPS's own threshold. The CPS applied the Full Code Test to 11 further candidate charges built on the same investigative pattern (Operation Hummingbird methodology, same forensic standards, same expert advisers, same unit, same period) and concluded that 'the evidential test was not met.' This is the CPS itself declining to extend the same pattern on which the original indictment was constructed. It is the first time an arm of the prosecution has declined to proceed on evidence built by the same methodology. The three former Trust executives arrested in July 2025 on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter remain separately under investigation. The January 2026 decision does not exonerate; it does not quash; it does not refer. But on the question of whether the same investigative methodology clears the prosecutorial threshold when applied to further candidate cases, the CPS has answered: no.
The CPS has applied its own Full Code Test to further candidate charges built on the same investigative pattern. It has concluded the evidential test was not met. Whatever that means for the existing convictions — the CPS says it means nothing — it means something about the methodology.
What the jury heard
Not applicable — this decision post-dates both trials.
What the Panel says
The Panel's scope is clinical — it does not address prosecutorial threshold decisions. But the Panel's case-by-case finding that the indicted cases do not meet diagnostic criteria for deliberate harm is consistent with a prosecutorial conclusion that the same methodology, applied to further candidate cases, does not clear the Full Code Test threshold.
What independent experts add
- The Full Code Test has two limbs: evidential (realistic prospect of conviction) and public interest. The CPS statement invokes the evidential limb specifically.
- The CPS decision concerns 11 charges relating to 9 further babies; these were under active investigation by Cheshire Constabulary and had reached the charging-decision stage.
- The decision does not affect existing convictions — the CPS has confirmed this explicitly. But it does affect the weight commentators can place on the methodology.
- The three former Trust executives arrested in July 2025 remain under separate investigation for gross negligence manslaughter; that arm is not affected by the January 2026 decision.
- The decision is one more post-conviction institutional datapoint, alongside the Shoo Lee Panel report, the Joint Insulin Report, the Bar Council letter, the Lord Sumption broadsheet intervention, the Heneghan/Goldacre EBM critique, and the David Davis MP adjournment debate.
- The Donna Anthony precedent is relevant: first appeal dismissed, subsequent expert-framework shift, CCRC referral, acquittal. The January 2026 CPS decision is the kind of post-conviction institutional datapoint a CCRC application weighs.