Correction — 5 September 2026
This page previously described Ms Blackwell KC as Senior Treasury Counsel who “led the Crown prosecution at the 2022–2023 Letby trial and the 2024 Child K retrial”, and attributed the Crown’s closing speech to her. That was wrong. The Crown was led by Nicholas Johnson KC, who also delivered the closing speech over four days from 19 to 22 June 2023. The page also cited the Chester Standard live-blog record of the trial as documenting her role; her name does not appear in it.
The page as it stood additionally contradicted itself, describing her as leading counsel in one section and as junior counsel in another. We have not been able to verify either from the trial record, so this page no longer asserts a role at trial. What is on the record, and is set out below, is her role at the Thirlwall Inquiry.
Her role in this case
Kate Blackwell KC appears at the Thirlwall Inquiry as counsel for the former senior managers of the Countess of Chester Hospital. She introduced herself to Dr Ravi Jayaram in those terms: “I am Kate Blackwell and I ask questions on behalf of the former senior managers.”
That places her on one side of the central institutional question the Inquiry was set up to answer: how the executive team responded when consultants escalated concerns. She cross-examined the consultants who raised the alarm, including Dr Jayaram and Dr Brearey, on the chronology of what they knew and when they said it. Those pages set out the exchanges.
What this page does not say
Acting for a client is not an endorsement of that client’s conduct, and nothing here should be read as a criticism of Ms Blackwell. Counsel are instructed; putting a case is the job. This page exists so that a reader following a cross-examination on this site can see who was asking the questions and on whose behalf — which is a fact about the proceedings, not about the barrister.