NHS baby deaths cover-up: Former watchdog chief Cynthia Bower and deputy implicated in suppressing CQC report

An alleged cover-up at the NHS watchdog was sanctioned at the highest levels of the organisation, it has been revealed.

The former chief executive and her deputy were at a meeting where a decision was made to suppress a damning report on the CQC’s regulatory failings over a hospital where as many as 16 babies died because of sub-standard care.

Cynthia Bower, who departed as chief executive of the CQC in September, was at the meeting. Her deputy, Jill Finney who left in March, was also there.

The official who is accused of saying of the damning report: “Are you kidding me? This can never be in a public domain nor subject to FoI [a Freedom of Information request]!” was identified as media manager Anna Jefferson, who still works for the CQC.

Louise Dineley, the CQC’s head of regulatory risk and quality, a current employee, was also present.

The CQC made the disclosure after initially redacting the names from an independent report that accused the health regulator of a cover-up, on the basis of legal advice that it would breach the Data Protection Act.

The decision to protect the identities of staff was widely condemned, and the health secretary Jeremy Hunt said there should be “no hiding place” for those responsible. The CQC took further legal advice this morning and released the names in a letter to the Secretary of State today.

Cynthia Bower departed as chief executive of the CQC in September with a £1.35m pension pot. Her deputy, Jill Finney, earned £145,000 a year before leaving in March with a £60,000 a year.

Labour MP John Woodcock, Labour MP for Barrow and Furness, who has supported the families of patients who died at the University Hospitals Morecambe Bay Trust said that the officials should never work in the health service again.

“People found guilty of a cover-up that may have cost lives should never work in or around the NHS again and may be criminally liable.

 “Now public pressure has dragged the names out of the Care Quality Commission we need a thorough but swift independent process to get to the bottom of whether they are indeed guilty of these appalling allegations.”

He also said that questions needed to be asked over how much the former health secretary, Andrew Lansley, knew about wrongdoing at the CQC, after a board member and whistleblower at the organisation, Kay Sheldon said she had raised concerns with him shortly before the damning report was suppressed.

 “…the investigation must also test the alarming claim in this week’s report that this may be part of ‘a broader and on-going cover-up’ – we need to understand what happened when the former secretary of state was apparently warned about a cover-up at the CQC by a whistleblower just before the document was suppressed,” he said.

The Care Quality Commission suppressed an internal report on its failure to blow the whistle over deaths at the maternity unit at Furness General Hospital, an independent report revealed yesterday.

“There’s no blanket ban under the Data Protection Act that would deal with a situation like this. If there’s an overriding public interest in the names being in the public domain then you shouldn’t pray in aid the Data Protection Act, it just looks like a get out,” the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

John Ashton, a former director of public health for NHS Cumbria, claimed the CQC had written to police to tell them not to investigate.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think there should be prosecutions. This situation is appalling, it’s gone on for a long time. The public have now lost trust, not just in the NHS but in a lot of our public institutions because people won’t take responsibility for when things go wrong.”

He added: “I have seen a letter to the police from someone at the CQC encouraging the police not to pursue it, which seems to be interference in the due process.”

David Prior at the Care Quality Commission review admitted on Wednesday that senior officials at the health watchdog had supressed a report highlighting failures at the University Hospitals of Morecombe Bay NHS Trust.

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has apologised on behalf of the Government and the NHS to the families of patients involved. The Trust is now being investigated by police over the deaths of eight mothers and babies.

Mr Prior told his board: “We can have no confidence, I think, not just at Morecambe Bay but across many more hospitals, that we have done a proper job.” He also admitted to the BBC that the CQC was “not set up then, and we’re not fully set up now, to investigate hospitals”.

Mr Hunt told the Commons that the failings at Morecambe Bay had been “a terrible personal tragedy for all the families involved”. “A culture in the NHS had been allowed to develop where defensiveness and secrecy were put ahead of patient safety and care,” he said. “I want to… ensure this kind of cover-up never happens again.”

Mr Hunt has asked that the CQC look into the allegations of a cover-up and report back to him on exactly what advice the CQC were given that led them not to publish the names.

Mr Prior, who took charge of the CQC four months ago, told the BBC: “I have known for the last three months that we were not fit for purpose at all when it came to hospital inspections and that we had to fundamentally change the way we’re doing it.” He said that hospital inspections had previously been done by people with no medical expertise, including members of the fire service.

The CQC’s former chair, Dame Jo Williams, resigned in September and Bower left in February. Mr Prior said the former board had been “totally dysfunctional”.

The NHS’s chief medical officer, Sir Bruce Keogh, is currently investigating 14 hospitals that have seen persistently high mortality rates.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman insisted the Government had already taken “very clear, strong action” to reform the CQC.

“What occurred was… deeply disturbing and appalling,” the spokesman said.

Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action Against Medical Accidents, said that those responsible for the cover-up should not have been allowed to leave “with an unblemished record”.

Case study: ‘It embodies all that’s wrong with the NHS’

James Titcombe and his wife, Hoa, arrived at the Furness General Hospital at Morecambe Bay, Cumbria, on 27 October 2008. Their son, Joshua, was born that morning.

Nine days later, Mr Titcombe, a nuclear engineer from Barrow-in-Furness, watched his son die. Midwives and medical staff at Furness General failed to detect and monitor an infection, which became so serious that Joshua had to be transferred for intensive care at two different hospitals.

He died on 5 November. “We repeatedly asked why he didn’t need antibiotics and were reassured that he seemed fine  and there was no reason to give them to him,” Mr Titcombe said.

He has led the campaign for a public inquiry into “serious systemic failures” at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust which manages Furness General. Today he called reports of a cover-up at the Care Quality Commission “shocking”. “It embodies everything wrong with the culture in the NHS,” he said.

Source The Independent