00:00At the heart of this inquiry are the babies who died, who were injured, and their parents.
00:09I do not presume to describe the feelings and emotions that those parents have already
00:15experienced, nor those that lie ahead. But I will remind you of what has happened since
00:22the birth of their children. First, each parent celebrated the birth of each child.
00:32Then, when things seemed to be going well for these tiny babies, each one of them collapsed
00:38suddenly and unexpectedly. Some of the babies recovered, some survived, but with lifelong
00:48consequences. Some died. Deaths and injuries occurred in 2015 and in 2016. The parents
00:58were told that natural causes were the reason for the death or lifelong difficulties. And
01:05so each parent grieved the loss of a new life and all that it promised, and lived with that
01:12profound sorrow. In 2018, so two or three years later, they learned that their babies
01:20may have been deliberately harmed. A nurse who had been looking after their babies in
01:25hospital had been arrested. In November 2020, she was charged with murder and attempted
01:33murder. Nearly three years later, she was convicted of seven counts of murder and seven
01:40of attempted murder, seven or eight years after those babies had been born. There has
01:46been a huge outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions.
01:56So far as I'm aware, it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts
02:03of the evidence have been selected and criticised, as has the conduct of the defence at trial.
02:10About which those defence lawyers can say nothing. All of this noise has caused enormous
02:18additional distress to the parents who have already suffered far too much. I make it absolutely
02:27clear that it's not for me, as chair of this public inquiry, to set about reviewing the
02:33convictions. The Court of Appeal has done that with a very clear result. The convictions
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