Judge denies he was asked to advise Letby hospital because he is a Freemason, inquiry hears
A judge has denied his status as a Freemason was the reason behind hospital bosses approaching him to give legal advice over concerns about Lucy Letby, a public inquiry has heard.
The Thirlwall Inquiry into events surrounding the crimes of Letby heard that in 2017 Judge Simon Medland KC, then a criminal barrister, was asked by the Countess of Chester hospital’s executive team if there was enough evidence to contact the police.
Letby was redeployed to the hospital’s risk and patient safety office in July 2016, after the medics raised their concerns, but hospital bosses opted to commission a series of reviews into the increased number of deaths on the unit in 2015 and 2016, rather than go straight to the police.
Following the reviews, Mr Medland recommended that “as things stand” he did not see there was sufficient information that might give rise to reasonable grounds for suspecting a criminal offence had been committed.
He recommended that Detective Chief Superintendent Nigel Wenham, the then police representative on the local child death overview panel, should be informed about the matter.
In an earlier hearing, the inquiry heard of “rumours and hearsay” about a Freemason connection to a “number of high-ranking people in the hospital and elsewhere”.
While Mr Medland is a member of the Freemasons, he told the inquest it had no "impact or relevance" on his work advising hospital bosses.
The judge said: “There was no masonic context to my instruction.
“As it happens Stephen Cross is a Freemason and as it happens I am a Freemason. We are not members of the same masonic lodge, we are not close friends.
“I can assure you and anybody else who is concerned with this inquiry that I have been entirely candid about that.
“To my mind it’s of no more impact or relevance than for example if we had both had an interest in crown green bowling or church bell ringing.
“He instructed me, I assume, because he thought that I would be able to do a good job.
“I am not aware of anyone else on the hospital board at all who is a member of the Freemasons, either a man or a woman.”
Judge Medland added Chester was a “small city” and he knew Mr Cross “a little” but they were not personal friends.
He said: “We have never been to each other’s houses or anything like that.”
Mr Wenham, now retired from Cheshire Police, met consultants and executives later in April and advised the hospital to formally request police involvement, which happened the following month.
Giving evidence on Wednesday, Mr Wenham said he did not think he had ever met Mr Cross.
Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The inquiry, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, is expected to sit until early 2025, with findings published by late autumn of that year.
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