Dr Julian Lewis: I congratulate the Secretary of State [Alan Milburn] on the contents of his statement and on the sensitivity with which he delivered it and has answered questions. Does he agree that the peculiarity of this [the Dr Shipman serial murder] case, even compared to the cases of other serial murderers, is that there was no obvious financial, or apparent sexual, motivation for the crimes committed? Is it not to the credit of the police that, as soon as a financial motivation was drawn to their attention, they managed to investigate the case so thoroughly and unravel it so comprehensively? While I endorse what has been said about the need to discover who has made mistakes in the past, does the Secretary of State agree that, on the surface at least, the police – once alerted – appear to have done a first-rate job