Thirlwall ideal choice for Letby

But aspects of her statutory inquiry raise concerns

Dame Kate Thirlwall is the ideal judge to chair the Lucy Letby statutory inquiry. As a barrister, Thirlwall appeared in several public inquiries, including the Leicestershire children’s homes inquiry and the North Wales children’s homes inquiry.

From 2009 to 2010, she chaired a major NHS inquiry into deaths of patients at Airedale Hospital in in West Yorkshire, investigating allegations that a nurse had deliberately killed patients by injecting them with high doses of painkillers. The nurse, Anne Grigg-Booth, died of a drug overdose while awaiting trial.

Lady Justice Thirlwall

Thirlwall became a High Court judge in 2010 and was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 2017, where she served as senior presiding judge of England and Wales during the height of the Covid pandemic. Educated at St Anthony’s Girls’ Catholic Academy in Sunderland and Bristol University, she is married with two grown-up children. Asked to sum up her best quality, she replied “determination”.

The government has done well in persuading the lord chief justice to release a serving Lady Justice of Appeal, not least because another senior judge, Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, is already chairing an inquiry into alleged unlawful killings by UK special forces in Afghanistan. But there are aspects of the Letby inquiry that raise concerns.