NHS boss Jill Finney: 'I did not order baby deaths cover-up' Jill Finney rejects claim in major report that she sanctioned a cover-up Former deputy chief executive of Care Quality Commission speaks out Morecambe Bay care failings has 'echoes' of Mid-Staffs scandal, says QC Denial: Jill Finney, former deputy chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, insisted she did n ot order a report to be deleted One of the senior health officials accused of ordering the deletion of a damning report in care at a baby unit today denied leading a cover-up. Jill Finney, the former deputy chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, insisted that a crucial meeting to discuss a study into Morecambe Foundation Trust did not demand it be destroyed. The claim that the Ms Finney told an official to 'read my lips' and delete the report proved one of the most explosive to emerge from an investigation into care failings. But she claims she was told to delete it, according to an independent report by chartered accountants Grant Thornton published last week. It said that at a meeting in March last year, Ms Jefferson said: "Are you kidding me? It was also claimed that Ms Finney told Ms Dineley to 'read my lips' and delete the report. But Ms Finney today insisted this was not true. She said: "At that meeting we reviewed the report and the report concluded that the activity that CQC had undertaken at Morecambe was satisfactory. It was quite clear on reading the report that the activity was not satisfactory and the CQC should have done more. So at that meeting we agreed that the report required much further work, there was not a decision at that meeting to delete the report, nor was there an instruction. Storm: Former CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower (left) and media manager Anna Jefferson have also faced criticism She claims that while Ms Dineley believes that there had been an instruction to delete her report, "the other three individuals in that meeting do not recall that instruction." However she admitted that the CQC had not regulated Morecambe properly. The report concluded it was adequate, we in the meeting felt it was not adequate, CQC should have done more at Morecambe Bay. Failings at Morecambe Bay hospitals have 'echoes' of the Mid-Staffs care scandal, Robert Francis QC warned. The author of the damning report into neglect at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, where up to 1,200 people may have died needlessly, condemned the lack of transparency. Mr Francis, pictured, warned: 'It seems to me that there are considerable echoes of what I found. There has been apparently a lack of candour and openness at Trust level, there was a failure of a regulator to find out that things were going wrong, and there appears, or could well have been, in many different places, a lack of openness and transparency. He claimed there was an institutional problem with the NHS. He told BBC Radio 4: 'One of the problems with the NHS - one of its advantages, but one of its problems - is that it's hugely complex. And as a result of that it has many different bits of it which have to interrelate with each other. And it becomes quite easy in such an organisation for matters of concern to disappear between the cracks. At the point of registration we should have done more and when it was registered as a Foundation Trust we should have exercised more concern. She complained that she had been subjected to a "media feeding frenzy" without any notice. "If CQC felt that they wanted to produce a report where they named and shamed individuals in the public domain then they should have made sure that they followed a fair process," she said. They did not follow a fair process. We made several representations to Grant Thornton about the accuracy of the way in which they were recording the information and the way in which they were beginning to treat one allegation as (an) act. Grant Thornton did not reply and did not change the way in which the allegations were presented. At that meeting I did no such thing and as a result of the way in which they redacted the names, what they generated was a complete media feeding frenzy. The first time I saw the final report was when I read it online on Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning the media feeding frenzy had begun. CQC Head of Regulatory Risk & Quality Louise Dineley, who wrote the internal review, claims she confronted senior management with her critical findings but that Ms Finney ordered it to be deleted. Cynthia Bower, then CQC chief executive, and media manager Anna Jefferson also deny any attempted cover-up at the meeting. Ms Finney suggested that a lack of sufficient resources meant it was "always going to be a very, very tall order" for the CQC to do its job effectively. The fact that the regulatory activity in Morecambe Bay could have been better was undoubtedly a feature of the very, very sizeable agenda CQC had to lead. Ministers had been warned it would be "challenging" when the body was set up, she said. The new management "has received substantially more funding," she said. It is able to employ more professional staff then we were able to do and to recruit people who are of a higher level of seniority.