Three more British parents and carers may have been wrongly jailed for shaking young children to death based on the testimony of expert medical witnesses, the Attorney General revealed today.

Lord Goldsmith announced in the House of Lords that a review of each of the 297 cases of murder or manslaughter of a child under two raised serious doubts over three convictions.

The convictions will be forwarded to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Court of Appeal, which will consider whether the defendants were wrongly jailed.

Only one of the three, a man jailed for life for murder in 2001, is still in prison. The other two - a man jailed for three years for manslaughter in 2001, and a woman jailed for seven years for manslaughter in 1994 - have completed their sentences.

Lord Goldsmith gave a statement to the House of Lords today following the completion of the review, launched when the Appeal Court overturned the conviction of Angela Cannings for killing two of her babies in 2003.

He explained that appeal judges had ruled unsafe a legal rule of thumb that three tell-tale injuries, when found together, were almost irrefutable evidence of a child having been deliberately shaken to death. The three signs - brain swelling, bleeding between the brain and skull, and bleeding in the retina of the eyes - are collectively referred to as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).

Lord Goldsmith explained that although the trio of injuries was a strong indication, each case had to be decided on its own merits.

The Attorney General also announced measures designed to ensure that expert witnesses in trials give only their own objective opinion and do not act as an advocate for the prosecution or defence.

The misleading evidence of Professor Sir Roy Meadow was central to the prosecution of Mrs Cannings. He used statistical evidence later ruled to be misleading to advance the case against her. Professor Meadow also gave evidence in the cases of Donna Anthony and Sally Clark, who were also convicted of murdering two babies but later cleared on appeal.

The GMC struck him off the medical register last July, ruling that the evidence he gave in the Clark trial was "fundamentally unacceptable".

The Attorney General told the Lords that the cases against Mrs Clark, Mrs Cannings and Trupti Patel had generated a wide-ranging medical debate about the causes of SBS. He said that judges hearing Mrs Cannings's appeal had considered the evidence of 25 expert witnesses from all disciplines, which had helped to clarify the law. This had enabled a review of other cases to be carried out.

"The presence of all or some of three particular injuries is a strong pointer towards shaken baby syndrome… but the triad alone cannot automatically lead to a conclusion that the infant has been shaken," he said.

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