Context
Sir David Davis MP used his Commons adjournment debate slot in November 2024 to raise the Lucy Letby case, setting out in parliamentary terms the principal statistical, medical and methodological concerns that had been accumulating on the public record. Sir David was the first senior parliamentarian to raise the case on the floor of the House.
Key passages
Sir David Davis MP
I rise to raise what I believe is a potential miscarriage of justice of the most serious kind. The conviction of Lucy Letby rests on three pillars: a statistical chart, a set of medical interpretations that were described in expert terms as consistent with deliberate harm, and a handful of handwritten notes. Each of those three pillars has now been publicly challenged by independent experts of standing.
Sir David Davis MP
The Royal Statistical Society has publicly criticised the shift chart shown to the jury. Professor Richard Gill, the statistician who helped overturn the wrongful conviction of nurse Lucia de Berk in the Netherlands, has written letters to that effect. These are not marginal voices. This is the mainstream of their discipline.
Sir David Davis MP
I am not asking this House to declare anyone innocent. I am asking this House to recognise, as the minister will I hope recognise, that when substantive new expert evidence is placed on the public record, we have a system — the Criminal Cases Review Commission — whose job it is to examine that evidence, and that examination must be allowed to run its course without pressure or obstruction.
What to read alongside this
See our page on the shift chart and the Dr Evans methodology for the evidential issues Sir David references, and our summary of the Shoo Lee Panel press conference.