The barrister representing Lucy Letby has handed over "fresh" medical evidence that he claims will "completely demolish" the case against her. Mark McDonald told reporters the convicted child serial killer has "a new hope" as he visited the Birmingham offices of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

He was there to deliver the full findings of a 14-strong international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists who say poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for babies collapsing at the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit. Also passed to the CCRC, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, was a separate report from seven medics which claims the results of insulin tests on two infants, which a jury concluded Letby poisoned, were unreliable.

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr McDonald said the new evidence "blows the case out the water".

"Today I've put in 23 expert reports from 24 experts from across the realm covering eight separate countries," he said.

"Those expert reports completely demolish the prosecution's case that was put before the jury.

"It is now hoped that the CCRC will not take long to look at this evidence and refer it back to the Court of Appeal.

"These reports show that no crime was committed... This blows the case out the water.

"I'm absolutely confident that the expert evidence that has appeared post-conviction totally undermines the safety of the conviction.

"I'm very confident that we're going to get back to the Court of Appeal."

Asked how Letby "is doing", he said: "I don't talk about Lucy herself as a person but to say this: She's read all the reports, she's seen the reports, we have a new hope now.

"A new hope that, in fact, the truth will come out. So yes, she has a new hope."

Last month, lawyers for the families of Letby's victims rubbished the international panel's findings as "full of analytical holes" and "a rehash" of the defence case heard at trial.

Mr McDonald also gave the CCRC a separate report on the insulin cases of Child F and Child L from seven experts including two consultant neonatalogists, a retired professor in forensic toxicology and a paediatric endocrinologist.

Their report summary concluded the jury was misled in a number of "important areas" including medical and evidential facts, and that key information on the insulin testing procedure was not submitted.

It added that the biomechanical test used in both cases "can give rise to falsely high insulin results" due to the presence of antibodies which can interfere with the outcome.

On Thursday, Mr McDonald released the independent panel's case summaries of all 17 babies that were said by trial prosecutors to have been deliberately harmed on the Countess of Chester Hospital's neonatal unit.

The 14-strong panel concluded that no criminal offences had been committed at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016 and instead provided alternative causes of deterioration.

Among the findings of the panel, working pro bono for Letby's defence team, was that baby boy Child C died following ineffective resuscitation from a collapse after an "acute small bowel obstruction" that went unrecognised, rather than from a deliberate administration of air.

Child P, a triplet boy, was also found by the jury to have been fatally injected with air but the panel ruled he died from a collapsed lung that was "suboptimally managed".

Letby's experts said there was no evidence of air embolism - in which bubbles form and block the blood supply - in Child E, a twin boy, and that bleeding was not caused by inflicted trauma but from either a lack of oxygen pre-birth or a congenital blood vessel condition.

The panel said insulin-related levels for Child E's brother, Child F, insulin were within the norm for preterm infants and it did not prove that synthetic insulin was administered.

The same conclusion was reached for Child L, another twin boy that Letby was convicted of attempting to murder by insulin poisoning, and both cases were said to have involved sub-standard medical management of hypoglycaemia.

Letby lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal, in May for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and in October for the attempted murder of a baby girl which she was convicted of by a different jury at a retrial.

Lady Justice Thirlwall is due to publish in November the findings from the public inquiry into how the former nurse was able to commit her crimes.

In written submissions to the inquiry, Richard Baker KC, said families of Letby's victims were concerned that medical evidence was being presented at press conferences.

Cheshire Constabulary is continuing a review of deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neonatal units of the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women's Hospital during Letby's time as a nurse from 2012 to 2016.