The Conservative MP David Davis has used parliamentary privilege to ask why UK readers were barred from viewing an article in a prominent US magazine about the case of the former nurse Lucy Letby.
He told fellow MPs that the block on the story published in the New Yorker seemed “in defiance of open justice”.
Letby was convicted last summer of murdering seven babies at the Countess of Chester hospital, where she was a neonatal nurse. She has sought leave to appeal against her convictions. She is due to be retried in June on one charge of attempted murder on which the last jury could not reach a verdict.
The New Yorker published a 13,000-word piece about her case on Monday but UK readers are blocked from accessing it online. Under English law, British media are restricted in their reporting owing to Letby’s upcoming retrial.
During justice questions in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Davis said: “That article was blocked from publication on the UK internet.” He said this seemed “in defiance of open justice”.
Davis asked the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, to review the reporting restrictions. “Will the lord chancellor look into this matter and report back to the house?” he said.
Chalk replied that court orders must be obeyed but could be displaced by someone applying for them to be removed. “So that will need to take place in the normal course of events. I will just simply make a point on the Lucy Letby case – that the jury’s verdict must be respected. If there are grounds for an appeal, that should take place in the normal way.”
Letby was sentenced to 14 whole-life orders for the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of six other babies between June 2015 and June 2016.
