A judge has denied he was asked to give legal advice to hospital bosses over concerns about nurse Lucy Letby because he is a Freemason, a public inquiry has heard.

The Thirlwall Inquiry into events surrounding the crimes of Letby heard that both Judge Simon Medland KC and the Countess of Chester’s former director of corporate and legal services, Stephen Cross, are members of the organisation.

In April 2017, former Cheshire Constabulary officer Mr Cross instructed then criminal barrister Mr Medland on behalf of the hospital, at a time when the police had still not been called in after consultant paediatricians told executives 10 months earlier they feared the neonatal nurse could be murdering babies.

Earlier this week the inquiry heard of “rumours and hearsay” about a Freemason connection of a “number of high-ranking people in the hospital and elsewhere”.

Neonatal unit clinical lead Dr Stephen Brearey said he understood Mr Cross had risen “quite quickly” from a junior position, and queried whether the hospital had followed any processes “in terms of fit and proper candidates for executive roles”, and that he heard he had been demoted from a senior rank in the police force to a constable.

Dr Brearey said people at the hospital had the impression there might be “deals going on behind the scenes”.

Questioning Judge Medland on Thursday, Richard Baker KC, representing families of Letby’s victims, said his clients had concerns about the matter.

The judge said: “There was no masonic context to my instruction.

“As it happens Stephen Cross is a Freemason and as it happens I am a Freemason. We are not members of the same masonic lodge, we are not close friends.

“I can assure you and anybody else who is concerned with this inquiry that I have been entirely candid about that.

“To my mind it’s of no more impact or relevance than for example if we had both had an interest in crown green bowling or church bell ringing.

“He instructed me, I assume, because he thought that I would be able to do a good job.

“I am not aware of anyone else on the hospital board at all who is a member of the Freemasons, either a man or a woman.”

Mr Cross has yet to give evidence but in a statement to the inquiry he confirmed his Freemason connections in Cheshire.

Judge Medland added Chester was a “small city” and he knew Mr Cross “a little” but they were not personal friends.

He said: “We have never been to each other’s houses or anything like that.”

Letby was redeployed to the hospital’s risk and patient safety office in July 2016, after the medics raised their concerns, but hospital bosses opted to commission a series of reviews into the increased number of deaths on the unit in 2015 and 2016, rather than go straight to the police.

Judge Medland told the inquiry he understood the hospital’s executive team wanted to know in April 2017 if there was enough evidence to contact the police.

He went on to recommend that “as things stand” he did not see there was sufficient information that might give rise to reasonable grounds for suspecting a criminal offence had been committed.

He recommended that Detective Chief Superintendent Nigel Wenham, the then police representative on the local child death overview panel, should be informed about the matter.

Mr Wenham, now retired from Cheshire Police, met consultants and executives later in April and advised the hospital to formally request police involvement, which happened the following month.

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Mr Wenham said he did not think he had ever met Mr Cross.

Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

The inquiry, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, is expected to sit until early 2025, with findings published by late autumn of that year.