A senior consultant who tried to blow the whistle on Lucy Letby said doctors felt 'intimidated' by hospital bosses who discouraged them from going to police.

Dr John Gibbs, who has since retired, said managers 'closed their minds' too soon to the possibility that Lucy Letby was killing or harming babies on the neonatal unit.

He told the Mail that he was 'shocked' when chief executive Tony Chambers called the hospital's seven consultant paediatricians to a meeting, in January 2017, and told them Letby had not done anything wrong.

The hospital boss even ordered medics to write a letter of apology to the nurse.

By this stage Letby, 33, had been working in an office job at the hospital for seven months, having been removed following the death of two triplets on consecutive shifts in June 2016.

Dr John Gibbs said managers 'closed their minds' too soon to the possibility that Lucy Letby was killing or harming babies on the neo-natal unit

Lucy Letby, pictured, was found to have killed seven children and tried to kill another six. She will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court

Letby went on a hen weekend with friends hours before murdering her first tiny victim. Countess of Chester nurses were on the trip. They travelled by train and visited several bars, but ended up drinking cocktails at Vodka Revolution

She was hoping to return to the unit after an internal grievance apparently found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Dr Gibbs said he felt intimidated by Mr Chambers, who told the consultants at the meeting that he was 'drawing a line' under the matter.

Dr Gibbs's colleague, Dr Stephen Brearey, told the BBC that medics were warned there would be 'consequences,' if they refused to write the apology.

Dr Gibbs said: 'There was a difficult meeting at the end of January 2017 where all us paediatricians met with senior managers, including the chief executive, the director of nursing and the medical director.

'We were told how stressful this had all been for Lucy Letby and a letter from her was read out explaining how unfair we paediatricians had been.

'We were told the chief executive had met with her and her father and we were told to write a letter of apology to Lucy Letby.

'It seemed inappropriate, but the whole of the meeting shocked me. At the end, I remember the chief executive saying he was drawing a line under this issue and he ran his finger across the desk. He looked at all of us and said: "Do you understand?" I did feel, to some extent, intimidated.'

He said the consultants wrote the letter of apology, but added: 'We didn't feel it was justified.

'We didn't apologise for raising concerns at all, we didn't say anything about whether we felt those concerns were true or not, we merely apologised to Lucy Letby for any inappropriate comments that may have been made and for the distress that had been caused.

'We left it more general.'

Hospital chief executive Tony Chambers (left) called the hospital's seven consultant paediatricians to a meeting, in January 2017, and told them Letby had not done anything wrong. Nursing director Alison Kelly (right) has also been accused of 'fobbing' off doctors' concerns about Letby

The twisted nurse injected the helpless babies with air, poisoned two with insulin or force-fed the little victims milk

In one 'confession' Letby described herself as an 'awful person' before writing 'I AM EVIL I DID THIS' (pictured)

The consultants said they felt they had 'no choice' but to continue trying to get the police involved for the sake of their patients.

So they wrote to Mr Chambers, to put it on record that they were still worried about the deaths, and the fact that two independent reviews, by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a specialist neonatologist, from London, had failed to address whether a member of staff could be responsible.

Dr Gibbs added: 'We began to realise that we were in direct confrontation with managers and we had no choice but to fight and to make sure the police got involved. By that stage, it was us or her.'

Eventually, in April 2017, Mr Chambers agreed to meet the chairman of the local Child Death Overview Panel and a police officer who sat on the panel.

Within minutes of listening to the consultants' fears about Letby, the pair told Mr Chambers he had to call in police.

Asked why he thought management were so reluctant to involve police for so long, Dr Gibbs said: 'I think they could not accept and could not believe that a member of staff could be killing a series of patients in hospital. They just couldn't believe it was possible.

'I've been told that some of the senior nurses were strongly defending Lucy Letby and they just couldn't believe she had done anything. I think they (managers) closed their minds to the fact she could have done that too soon.

'It is a shame that, despite all us paediatricians expressing concerns, our clinical experience and our repeated observations that these deaths were outside our normal experience, they were unnatural and unusual, that advice wasn't heeded.'

Another doctor has told the Mail that it was telling that Mr Chambers was a nurse before moving into management.

Alison Kelly and Karen Rees, two other managers on the executive team, were also nurses.

'You wonder whether they were simply protecting one of their own and became blinkered by that,' the medic said.

Dr Gibbs said he had 'mixed emotions' about the guilty verdicts.

'I feel some relief that the jury have come to conclusions in most of the cases and that the jury determined the truth. But, of course, it is devastating for the families.'

He said it was telling that, in the seven years since Letby had left, there had been just one death on the neonatal unit.

Asked if he wished to respond to Dr Gibbs's claims, Mr Chambers referred to a statement he issued on Friday after the guilty verdicts.

He confirmed he would give evidence to the independent inquiry, adding it was 'the right place to explore these complex issues'.