Matthew Jeffery: Law, order, and doubt – Why the Lucy Letby case should give Conservatives pause

Matthew Jeffery is one of Britain’s most experienced global talent and recruitment leaders, with more than 25 years advising boards and C-suite executives on workforce strategy, skills, and productivity.

As Conservatives, we are instinctively and unapologetically on the side of law and order.

We believe in strong policing, strong courts, and meaningful punishment. We believe that when terrible crimes are committed, justice must be firm, visible, and proportionate. Public safety comes first. Victims come first.

But Conservatism is also about fairness, equality before the law, and the integrity of justice itself. The strength of our system is not only that it punishes the guilty, but that it protects the innocent. Authority must be matched by accountability. Strength must be matched by restraint.

Law and order without fairness is not justice. It is simply power.

A core principle of British justice is that doubt should always be examined seriously, because the presumption of innocence is not a slogan but a safeguard.

That principle is why the case of Lucy Letby should give many Conservatives pause for reflection.

This is not an argument that she is innocent. I am not a lawyer. I am not privy to all the evidence. Nor is this an attempt to retry the case in the court of public opinion. She was convicted by a jury after a long and complex trial. That matters. Jury verdicts matter. The rule of law matters.

None of this should ever obscure the human reality at the centre of this case. Families lost children. Lives were devastated. Nothing written here diminishes that suffering. A commitment to careful review is not in tension with compassion for victims. It is part of respecting the seriousness of what happened.

However, a growing unease has emerged. More qualified voices are now raising technical questions about aspects of the evidence, the expert testimony, and the statistical interpretation presented at trial. This unease is no longer limited to social media speculation or fringe commentary. It is increasingly being voiced by clinicians, statisticians, and legal commentators who are asking whether every element of the prosecution case was as robust as first presented.

Several technical aspects of the case are now being actively debated in professional circles. This includes named clinical experts who have publicly challenged how specific medical research findings were applied in the courtroom context.

Questions about the evidential interpretation in the case have also been raised by senior Conservative MP David Davis, who has called for additional independent scrutiny. His intervention reflects a view that where serious expert disagreement emerges, review through established legal mechanisms strengthens rather than weakens confidence in justice.

First, the role of expert medical evidence. Complex neonatal cases involve extremely fragile patients, multiple variables, and sometimes tragic outcomes even under proper care. Some experts have questioned whether alternative medical explanations were sufficiently explored or presented with enough weight. Others warn that hindsight bias can shape interpretation once suspicion has formed.

One example often cited in this debate is Dr Shoo Lee, a senior neonatologist and researcher, who has publicly questioned aspects of how certain medical indicators were interpreted in relation to air embolism and related mechanisms. He has stated that research he was associated with has been interpreted more definitively in court than he believes the underlying science supports. Other experts disagree with his assessment. That disagreement does not determine guilt or innocence, but it does illustrate that elements of the medical interpretation remain professionally contested and therefore open to structured review.

Prosecution experts, including Dr Dewi Evans, continue to defend the medical indicators and patterns as consistent with deliberate harm, views that were tested in court. More broadly, the prosecution case and supporting expert evidence continue to be defended by official authorities and were accepted by the trial court and jury after detailed adversarial testing.

Second, the use of statistical patterns. Cases that rely in part on clustering can appear compelling, but they are also controversial. Statistical reasoning in criminal trials is difficult and has contributed to past miscarriages of justice. There are ongoing questions about how such patterns should be interpreted and how confidently they can support criminal conclusions without distortion.

Third, disclosure and process questions. As with several historic wrongful convictions, debate has emerged around whether all relevant material, alternative theories, and internal hospital factors were fully examined and tested in court. That does not prove error, but it does justify scrutiny.

None of this proves innocence. It does not overturn a verdict. But it does justify careful examination of how the verdict was reached. That examination belongs properly in appellate courts, independent review bodies, and formal inquiries, not social media campaigns.

Many experienced prosecutors and clinicians remain fully confident in the convictions and the evidence presented at trial. Their confidence should also be part of any serious review conversation.

The recent Netflix documentary has brought these technical debates into the mainstream and renewed public discussion.

The debate has become increasingly polarised. Some statisticians, clinicians, and academic commentators have questioned the evidential safety of aspects of the conviction, while others, including official voices and some affected families, strongly reject miscarriage of justice claims as unfounded and distressing. That divide is precisely why a careful, evidence based, institution led review process matters.

It is also important to state the current legal position clearly. The convictions remain fully in force and whole life sentences are being served. Appeals to date have been unsuccessful, and the Crown Prosecution Service recently confirmed that no further charges will be brought after reviewing additional evidence. An application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission is ongoing and includes extensive new expert material, but the review process is complex and no referral back to the Court of Appeal has been made at this stage. The Thirlwall Inquiry report is expected after Easter 2026, and several inquests have opened and been adjourned pending its findings. None of these developments overturn the verdicts, but they do explain why continued professional scrutiny is taking place.

If confidence in a verdict is to remain strong, the evidential and procedural foundations should be able to withstand structured, transparent questioning. The following are not accusations. They are review questions. They are the kinds of questions a robust justice system should be able to answer clearly and calmly.

A large number of technical review questions have now emerged from clinicians, statisticians, and legal commentators. These cover incident selection, medical interpretation, insulin assay reliability, statistical clustering, expert methodology, disclosure, and governance.

To illustrate the nature of these concerns, a brief sample includes:
• How were charged incidents selected from the wider pool of deaths and collapses?
• How were statistical clustering risks explained to the jury?
• Were key medical interpretations independently verifiable through laboratory results, imaging, or post mortem findings?

I have put together a full structured list of over 50 review questions. These are not accusations, but the kind of evidential clarity questions a robust justice system should be able to answer calmly and transparently.

Conservatives should not be afraid of this kind of questioning. Our justice system is adversarial by design. It is meant to be tested, challenged, and reviewed. Appeals, independent reviews, and forensic re analysis are not weaknesses. They are safeguards built into the system.

Even if every conviction stands exactly as decided, institutional learning still matters. Hospitals, regulators, prosecutors, and courts should examine how evidence is gathered, interpreted, and presented in complex medical cases. Justice is strengthened when systems learn, not when they become defensive.

Questioning evidential process is not the same as disputing verdicts. It is how strong justice systems maintain legitimacy.

This is not only about one case. It connects to a wider Conservative debate about punishment, certainty, and irreversibility.

I have long believed that in the most extreme and certain cases, the death penalty can be morally justified, not as vengeance, but as ultimate justice for the most horrific crimes. But cases like this introduce a sobering counterweight. When convictions depend heavily on expert interpretation and pattern evidence, the margin for error can be difficult to measure. If even a small risk of wrongful conviction exists, the case for irreversible punishment becomes far more fragile. A system that cannot guarantee perfection must confront the consequences of finality.

The wheels of justice must move slowly and carefully. If, and it is a very big if, there has been a miscarriage of justice here, delay compounds harm. Reviews must be thorough, independent, and timely. Confidence in verdicts depends not on refusing questions, but on answering them transparently.

There is also a human dimension that should not be ignored. If someone is guilty, humane treatment remains a moral obligation of the state. If someone is innocent, the suffering imposed by wrongful conviction is almost beyond comprehension. Either way, our standards must remain civilised.

For Conservatives, supporting law and order should also mean supporting rigorous review, evidential integrity, and procedural fairness. Strength and humility can coexist. Authority and accountability must coexist. That means supporting independent expert review where appropriate, full disclosure standards, and transparent responses to credible technical criticism. Not to weaken justice, but to reinforce it.

Continued professional scrutiny does not imply error, only that in cases of exceptional complexity, justice is strengthened by openness rather than silence.

Serious questions are now being asked. Serious people are asking them. The justice system should not fear that. It should welcome the chance to answer.

I hope that the Conservative leadership, including the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, and the party leader, Kemi Badenoch, will review and clearly restate the party’s position on justice safeguards in complex cases.

Conservatism should stand for a justice system that is firm, accountable, open to challenge, and capable of correcting mistakes through proper legal channels, calmly, lawfully, and with dignity.