Senior officials at an NHS watchdog have been accused of a cover-up after destroying their own report into a hospital maternity unit at the centre of a care scandal.
An independent investigation has found the Care Quality Commission failed to properly inspect University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, where the deaths of up to 16 babies are being investigated by the police.
Concerns were first raised in 2008, but in 2010 the CQC gave the trust, which serves 365,000 people in South Cumbria and North Lancashire, a clean bill of health.
Wednesday's report suggests that CQC bosses were so concerned about protecting the watchdog's reputation that they ordered an internal review to be deleted because it showed that their original inspection was flawed.
The new report details one official saying that he was told by a senior manager in March last year to destroy his review because it would expose the regulator to public criticism.
Furness General Hospital in Cumbria It says: "He informed us that he was instructed by a member of senior management at CQC to 'delete' the report of his findings.
"We think that the information contained in the report was sufficiently important that the deliberate failure to provide it could properly be characterised as a 'cover-up'."
James Titcombe, whose baby son Joshua died aged just nine days old in Furness General Hospital in 2008 after staff failed to spot and treat an infection, described the report as "shocking".
"It embodies everything that is wrong with the culture in the NHS. It's something that's been rotten really about the system," he said.
Westmorland General Hospital, where Morecambe Bay NHS Trust is based "We need it to change. We need that culture to change. Patient safety should be the number one priority, and organisations that work within regulation need to be aligned with that principle."
Responding to the report's findings, the regulator said: "We let people down, and we apologise for that.
"This report reveals just how poor the Care Quality Commission's (CQC) oversight of University Hospitals Morecambe Bay (UHMB) was in 2010.
"This is not the way things should have happened. It is not the way things will happen in the future. We will use the report to inform the changes we are making to improve the way we work and the way we are run."
It insisted there was "no evidence of a systematic cover-up" and promised "more thorough inspections".
CQC chairman David Prior said: "The publication draws a line in the sand for us. What happened in the past was wholly unacceptable.
"The report confirms our view that at a senior level the organisation was dysfunctional. The board and the senior executive team have been radically changed."
Shadow health minister Jamie Reed said: "First, we need to know who took the decision to delete this report, who else was party to the decision and what the justification was for so doing.
"Second, urgent clarity is needed on whether the CQC had any contact with the Department of Health about this matter and if so, what was the nature of that contact."
The CQC, which faces at least 30 civil negligence claims, is to be subject to a public inquiry.
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