Former Home Office Minister Norman Baker has said the inquiry into the circumstances at the Countess of Chester Hospital needs to be “led by a judge.”

Speaking to GB News, the former Minister of State for Crime Prevention said, “Non statutory inquiries, frankly, aren’t worth the time that they take.”

“There’s always going to be individuals whose behaviour is reprehensible, inexplicable, sadistic, psychopathic, these people occur, unfortunately, within society,” he said.

“The issue is not ‘Can we stop those people arising’ – because they will arise. The issue is, ‘How is their action identify quickly to prevent the sort of systemic problems which have been caused in this particular case?’”

“And there are clearly serious questions for the management at the hospital.

“We know that doctors and others reported, continually, concerns about this particular person and nothing was done.

“One of my former colleagues suggested there should be issues of whether or not the hospital management is guilty of corporate manslaughter.”

Mr Baker said he agreed with those calling for a statutory inquiry which could compel hospital managers to give evidence.

“I’m well aware of the limitations of a non-statutory inquiry,” he said. “That was what we had with Lord Hutton and the death of David Kelly.

“We had key witnesses not called there, we had nobody under oath – the whole thing was a disgrace.”

“So rather than the coroner’s inquest, on that particular occasion, which is a statutory process, we had a non-statutory inquiry, which actually spent most of time looking at what the BBC had done wrong or anything else.

“You either don’t bother or you have a proper inquiry.”