A regional daily has laid bare repeated attempts by a health trust to cover-up a damning report into the state of maternity services on its patch.

The Manchester Evening News revealed on its front page today that mums and babies had died because of bad medical decisions and chronic staff shortages at Pennine Acute NHS Trust, which covers the North Manchester Genweral and Royal Oldham hospitals.

It followed a four-month freedom of information battle to gain access to a secret report on the failings at the two hospitals following a tip-off from a whistleblower in July.

Reporter Jennifer Williams revealed that when the paper initially asked about the report, trust chiefs had denied its existence.

Among the shocking revelations contained in the report were:

• A very premature baby left to die alone in a moses basket deposited in a sluice room
• A mum who died of a ‘catastrophic haemorrhage’ after her symptoms were put down to mental illness
• A baby who died because staff failed to identify their mother’s rare blood type
• A woman who was left with a colostomy because her condition was missed three times

Now Jen has told the full story of the paper’s fight to get to the truth in a backgrounder headlined ‘What report? How denial and procrastination almost stopped us seeing a shameful report into maternity care.’

She revealed that the paper initally asked for a copy of the report on 19 July, having been told by the whistleblower that it had gone to the trust’s board the previous month.

Two days later, the trust told the paper: “There has not been an internal report specifically on our maternity services that has been presented or seen by the trust board.”

In August, the MEN submitted a freedom of information request asking for ‘copies of any ‘internal report/review/investigation carried out into avoidable deaths and/or harm in the last year.’

However after getting no response from the trust, the paper then contacted the Information Commissioner who ordered the trust to respond within 10 days.

Following further procrastination, the whistleblower leaked extracts of the report to the paper earlier this month and the paper told the trust it intended to publish them.

Finally, on Tuesday this week, the trust revealed the unredacted version of the report.

Wrote Jen: “It took the MEN four months to finally get hold of Pennine Acute NHS Trust’s shocking internal report into the state of its maternity services at North Manchester General and the Royal Oldham.

“But this week repeated questions, two Freedom of Information requests, help from the Information Commissioner – and possibly most crucially – the actions of a brave whistleblower – finally paid off.”