None of the fresh evidence Davis mentioned in Parliament has previously been disclosed, and none of it was aired at Letby’s trial or unsuccessful appeal. But now, he said, it must lead to a re-trial, for it “directly contradicts the prosecution’s version of events”.

Davis said the two experts, Dr Neil Aiton and Dr Silvena Dimitrova, who both work at a specialist unit treating very sick babies at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, have so far completed two detailed “case reviews” based on the medical notes relating to Baby O and another of Letby’s alleged victims, “Baby C”. Others are in train.

In both cases, according to Davis, they found not just evidence of “suboptimal care” that had nothing to do with Letby at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital where she worked, but also that two of the doctors directly responsible for this   — whom Davis did not name — went on to blame Letby, and gave evidence against her at her trial.

The doctor whose needle pierced Baby O’s liver was, Davis said, “one of the principal accusers of Lucy Letby”, as was the doctor who made several clinical blunders that may have caused the death of Baby C.

In the months since Letby was convicted in 2022, high-profile media investigations have raised questions about her conviction. For example, they have cast doubt on what Davis described as “an influential but spectacularly flawed piece of evidence”, a chart claiming that the common factor linking the seven babies’ deaths was that Letby had been on duty at the time.

Other reports have revealed that the unit had been battling to contain an outbreak of a lethal “superbug” when the babies died. But the claims made by Davis in his speech broke new ground.

The prosecution claimed both Baby O and Baby C died as a consequence of “air embolism”, after Letby injected air into their blood or via their nasal-gastric tubes. However, Davis said, the case notes analysed by Aiton and Dimitrova told “a very different story”.

In the case of Baby O, who died in June 2016, Davis said they suggested that “the doctors used excessive pressure during resuscitation, which overinflated the baby’s lungs and prevented blood from flowing back into the lungs. This caused the baby to desaturate [suffer a dangerous fall in oxygen levels].”

But confronted by this, “the medical team responded by increasing the pressures even more — initiating a downward spiral in the baby’s condition. The overinflation of the baby’s lungs forced the diaphragm downward, pushing the liver into the baby’s abdominal cavity.”

It was then, Davis said, that “the consultant in charge took a decision to insert a needle into the abdomen to release what they thought was pressure in the abdomen. However, this was wrongly inserted into the right side of the baby’s abdomen. As a result of this error, the needle penetrated the liver.” The notes, said Davis, suggest that the death of Baby O “was avoidable, and resulted from suboptimal care”.

Baby C’s case notes also contained evidence of “suboptimal care”, Davis told the House. He died in June 2015 having been “profoundly unwell before birth”. Born weighing just 1.75lb, he had difficulty breathing, and was treated with “surfactant”, a substance administered via an endotracheal tube.

But according to the case notes, Davis said, the doctor in charge “pushed the tube too far in, pushing it into the lung, meaning the other lung was left collapsed”.

Moreover, “in the days after the baby’s birth, he showed several signs of abdominal obstruction, including the vomiting of bile” and never opened his bowels. Yet the doctor did not recognise these symptoms. The report by Aiton and Dmitrova concludes: “This baby died of natural causes compounded by suboptimal medical care”.

Letby’s conviction for murdering Baby C rests on an X-ray which, the prosecution claimed, revealed he had excess air in his abdomen, administered by her. Yet according to Davis, “it has become clear that Letby was not even at the hospital when the X-ray was taken, nor had she been since Baby C’s birth two days earlier”.

Davis told the House that since he first spoke on Letby’s case in the summer, he had been approached by numerous experts, including “leading statisticians, neonatal specialists, forensic scientists and legal experts”. Among them were a “past president of the Royal Statistical Society and a past president of the of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health: people who were more knowledgeable than the purported experts whose testimony convicted Lucy Letby”.

He had also been contacted by staff who had “served at the Chester Hospital” but had been “afraid to come forward”. But however compelling the unheard evidence might be, “one of the problems we face is that much of the evidence was available at the time, but was simply not presented to the jury.”

“This means the Court of Appeal can dismiss it, basically saying the defence should have presented it at the initial trial. It is in essence saying, “if your defence team weren’t good enough to present this evidence, you can stay banged up for life”.”

“This may be judicially convenient,” Davis said, “but it is not justice”.

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David Rose is UnHerd‘s Investigations Editor.

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