Lucy Letby has failed – twice – to get judges to overturn her convictions for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more.
The Thirlwall public inquiry into her case last week found she could have been caught sooner. Yet Letby continues to protest her innocence and has been backed by a significant campaign including high-profile individuals such as the Conservative MP Sir David Davis.
Fresh claims that her prosecution is a major miscarriage of justice are made in the new documentary Lucy Letby – Scapegoat?, a collaboration between and Channel 5.
PM to meet Trump for first time this week – what to expect
Prime Minister Andy Burnham set off for New York on Monday for the United Nations General Assembly.
It will be Burnham’s first foray into global diplomacy, as well as his first opportunity to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump.
Burnham is expected to meet Trump on Tuesday, at a time when the UK’s special relationship with the US is particularly fraught.
From the war in Iran, to Israel and the Falklands, there are a string of issues that could lead to conflict. Though there are hopes for co-operation too.
PM to set out vision for Britain
For Burnham, who Trump has described as the “mayor of a town”, an array of flashpoints may crop up in their 30-minute meeting.
The meeting will happen the same day the PM plans to set out his vision for Britain’s place on the world stage.
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What could be on the agenda?
Britain has not endorsed the wider Iran war, which is driving up energy costs.
Burnham is expected to press Trump for more support for Ukraine.
Trump has pressed former PMs to expand North Sea drilling and welcomed Burnham’s pledge to do so.
What could be on the agenda?
Digital services tax
Trump has threatened trade deals over the UK’s £1bn digital tax and has concerns over its under-16 social media ban.
Trade deals
Burnham may press Trump to fully revive the £31bn tech prosperity deal.
Trump has declined to commit to defending the Falklands, stoking fears that he could treat the islands’ sovereignty as negotiable.
Watch more from The i Paper
Cash ISA cut to go ahead in April – everything we know
A cut to the tax-free amount savers can deposit in a cash ISA will go ahead next April, The i Paper has learned.
Here is everything we know about the changing rules so far.
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What you need to know
The Government will press ahead with reforms to the cash ISA on 6 April 2027.
Former chancellor Rachel Reeves proposed the change in 2025 so that only £12,000 of the £20,000 annual ISA allowance could be held in cash, in a bid to encourage more people to invest in stocks and shares, which can offer higher long-term returns and boost businesses and the economy.
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Uninvested cash subject to new tax
The amount savers under 65 can deposit into a cash ISA tax-free each year will fall from £20,000 to £12,000 in April.
Savers in that age bracket will still be able to invest a further £8,000 tax-free in a stocks and shares ISA or the rarely used innovative finance ISA. Any interest earned on uninvested cash held inside stocks and shares ISAs will also face a new 22 per cent tax charge.
Finance industry calls for delays to new rules
- With less than seven months to go, the finance industry is demanding clarity on how the change will work – with some calling for a delay.
- Yorkshire Building Society described the timetable for implementing the changes as “challenging”.
- The Treasury has said officials are working “at pace” to put the necessary rules in place ahead of its launch next April.
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Customers face confusion about new rules
Bryan Byrnes, director of personal finance at savings provider Moneybox, said that customers were already confused about how the new rules will work.
He added: “Helping customers navigate these changes will therefore be just as important as implementing them.”
How baby girls are more sociable than boys from birth
Baby girls tend to be more people-focused than boys from when they are first born, a study suggests.
Researchers found that when newborns were shown side-by-side videos of a face and a toy, girls spent proportionally more time watching the face than boys did, suggesting that differences in attention may emerge from birth.
Biological factors at play
Because the babies were only a day or so old, it is unlikely that cultural or social experiences had influenced the effect.
It instead points to biological factors, including genetics and differing levels of testosterone exposure in the womb.
However, it is worth noting that the findings, based on tests with 130 babies at the Rosie Hospital in Cambridge, do not apply to all girls and all boys.
There was still plenty of variation and overlap between each sex.
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This is a very active and heated debate in the field of sex differences: what are the causes behind sex differences and how early in life are they present? What our research shows is that at least some differences are present at a small scale very early on in life.
Yumnah Khan, a PhD student at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge
What does it tell us?
- Small differences at birth may play a role in long-observed trends.
- For example, girls typically learn to talk earlier than boys, and develop certain social skills younger too.
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The expert view
If they’re showing heightened social interest from birth onwards, that might facilitate the development of these skills.
Although only a hypothesis, Khan said that greater social interest from birth could help facilitate verbal and social skills.
However, she said further studies that follow the babies until they are toddlers would be required to support that idea.
Everything you need to know about the Russian elections
The pro-Putin ruling United Russia party retained its decisive majority in the national parliament, near-complete election results showed on Monday, while the anti-war Yabloko party appeared to have won a tiny foothold in one regional parliament.
The background
- Vladimir Putin had cast the three-day election to the State Duma – the first since Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022 – as a test of support for the war.
- Elections for some regional parliaments and governors were held at the same time.
- In a tightly controlled political system, which critics say does not tolerate genuine dissent, few surprises were expected.
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A closer look at the results
With over 95 per cent of the vote counted, Ella Pamfilova, chair of the Central Electoral Commission, said United Russia had won a resounding victory with 57.83 per cent, up from the 49.8 per cent that it won in the last parliamentary election, in 2021.
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What else you need to know
- United Russia was set to control 355 seats or nearly 80 per cent of the 450-seat Duma, a total that includes results in individual constituencies.
- That would maintain its constitutional majority – enabling it to pass laws and initiate amendments to the constitution without support of other parties.
- Pamfilova said three other parties had made it into parliament – the Communists with 13.81 per cent, the ultra-nationalist LDPR with 8.98 per cent, and the New People party with 7.96 per cent.
read the i paper’s latest analysis
What Putin’s paranoia will lead him to do next
“Stalin knew how to run Russia and how to get respect. Vladimir Putin could learn something from him.”
The BBC has removed several sketches from That Mitchell and Webb Look on iPlayer after deciding some of the comedy show’s material “no longer works today”.
Controversial material removed
The sketch comedy show, starring comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, originally ran for four seasons between 2006 and 2010.
However, some material has been removed, including scenes featuring war re-enactors in Blackface, a joke about Jimmy Savile and a sketch about a contestant on a makeover show wearing a burka, reported.
What did the BBC say?
This is a 20-year-old sketch ; in consultation with the programme makers, we have included the ones still work today not the ones don’t.
bbc spokesperson
Flights disrupted across north of UK – what you need to know
Flights across the UK – particularly Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north of England – are facing disruption due to a “technical issue” with air traffic control.
Here is everything you need to know – including the airports affected.
What caused the problem?
Nats, which runs air traffic control, has said the issue at its Prestwick centre in Ayrshire is “now fixed”, and that it is working to “safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can”. It said the glitch was a “connectivity issue with part of our systems network”.
Second failure in two weeks
This is the second failure at Nats in less than a fortnight.
But it said this most recent disruption has “nothing to do” with the software defect that led to the cancellation of 2,000 flights across the UK earlier this month.
EasyJet said this “once again calls into questions the resilience of Nats’ systems”.
Airports report disruption
Airports across the UK have reported varying degrees of disruption. They include:
- and – Arrivals and departures.
- – Issue causing some delays.
- – Experiencing “some delays”.
- – Urging passengers to contact their airline.
- – Experiencing some delays and cancellations similar to other airports.
- – Experiencing “some disruption” and “working closely” with Nats to resolve the issue.
- – Warns that there “will be disruption” to both arrivals and departures.
Here, The i Paper looks at five of the most important claims – and the evidence that has already been examined in court.
‘Lucy Letby was a scapegoat’
A doctor who worked alongside Letby at the Countess of Chester Hospital says he believes the evidence used to convict her is “extremely poor” and that there was no killer on the neonatal unit.
He told he believes Letby was used as a “scapegoat” by hospital bosses to cover up the fact the unit was performing poorly.
The doctor has not been identified but is described as a “top consultant”.
Individual failings and sub-optimal care at the Countess of Chester Hospital were discussed at length during both of Letby’s trials, but prosecutors insisted they did not explain the deaths and collapses of babies.
At least four other senior doctors – Ravi Jayaram, Stephen Brearey, John Gibbs and another who could not be named for legal reasons during the trial – were among those to raise the alarm at the time and eventually point their suspicions at Letby.
The idea that the jury were not able to consider poor care as an explanation for what happened to the babies was also rejected by Court of Appeal judges.
‘Unseen insulin results raise doubts’
The new documentary also claims that there was a set of results relating to a baby who was poisoned by Letby that were not shared with the jury.
Letby was convicted of attempting to murder two babies in separate incidents by secretly injecting insulin into IV bags which were being used to treat them.
During the trial, jurors were told how a blood result for Baby F showed low C-peptide to insulin, a key indicator that high levels of insulin had come from an external source rather than being produced by the body.
The result was spotted by a doctor at the time but she told the Thirlwall Inquiry she found the idea that the baby had been poisoned deliberately “so fantastical and unlikely that that couldn’t possibly be what had happened”.
She only brought the result up when the police investigation into Letby began two years later.
now claims that there were a further 14 glucose readings which were “normal” at the time Baby F was poisoned but that this evidence was not shown to the jury.
Retired detective Stuart Clifton, who investigated killer nurse Beverley Allitt, said the result should offer “clear grounds for appeal”.
Baby died after Letby left the unit
A mother has said her baby suddenly collapsed at the Countess of Chester Hospital and later died, six months after Letby was taken off the unit.
Annalise McClements said her son Archie died at St Mary’s hospital in Manchester after being moved from the Countess of Chester due to the seriousness of his illness.
The statistics around the unusual number of collapses and deaths at the Countess of Chester between 2015 and 2016 were a key part of the prosecution case.
The Thirlwall Inquiry set out how there was one death in 2010, three in 2011, three in 2012, two in 2013 and three in 2014.
Then, in 2015, eight babies admitted to the unit died.
Since Letby left the unit in July 2016, there has been one death, in September 2019.
Expert questions method of alleged murders
One of the methods by which Letby was said to have murdered babies was injecting them with air to cause an air embolism.
Evidence to prove this is what happened to the infants was discussed at length in both of her trials.
But a number of experts have since questioned whether this was a realistic explanation for the collapses.
Vascular surgeon Dr Colin Ferguson did not give evidence in the case but has become the latest to cast doubt on the theory.
“These babies haven’t died from air embolism,” he told .
“The fact that in no case was air found in the heart at post-mortem means that this is just not true.”
Following her retrial, Letby was convicted of attempting to murder a baby by removing her breathing tube.
A key piece of evidence related to the account of Jayaram, who said he walked in to find Baby K having collapsed with Letby standing over her cot doing nothing.
The doctor claimed he had had gone to check on the baby because he was becoming increasingly concerned at the pattern of Letby being present when babies unexpectedly collapsed in the unit.
But the new documentary has obtained a contemporaneous email written by Jayaram at the time in which he recalls the incident and says: “Staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations.”
The discrepancy over whether Jayaram went in because he was worried or because Letby called him for help was highlighted in the Thirlwall report.
Jayaram declined to comment when approached by for the new documentary.
What happens next?
Letby remains in prison and her only avenue to clear her name is an application to the miscarriages of justice watchdog the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
The CCRC is currently considering an application from Letby’s team including a bundle of evidence from around 30 experts who have looked at the case.
However, the commission has insisted it will act impartially and will not be influenced by the strength of any external campaigns.
There is no timeline as to when the CCRC will decide whether it believes Letby’s case should be referred back to the Court of Appeal or not.
Only a fraction of all applications submitted to the CCRC are successful each year.