Yard to alter way it probes baby deaths

Scotland Yard is expected to change the way suspicious baby deaths are investigated after a series of miscarriages of justice involving mothers wrongly accused of killing their children.

Detectives from the Met's child protection unit will lead future murder investigations where parents or carers are suspected of killing babies, taking the cases out of the remit of general murder squads.

The strategy is intended to help prevent parents being wrongly convicted, but also to improve the poor conviction rate against mothers and fathers who do kill their children by providing better evidence.

Senior detectives say they are responding to criticism of failings in investigations of infant deaths after the high-profile cases of wrongly accused mothers Angela Cannings, Sally Clark and Trupti Patel.