THE new boss of the hospital at the centre of a maternity deaths scandal said she was shocked to find out just how bad things were when she took over, despite being an expert in "turnaround trusts".

Jackie Daniel, who was appointed to the top job at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust in 2012, claimed the workings of the organisation were far worse than she feared.

The experienced NHS leader also told investigators looking into a series of tragic deaths of mothers and babies at Barrow's maternity unit over a nine-year period that it had been in no shape to pursue foundation trust status while services were failing so catastrophically.

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In an interview given to the Morecambe Bay Investigation panel in 2014, published for the first time last week, Mrs Daniel said: "I was quite shocked to find just how dysfunctional things were.

"It was described to me by partners as being very defensive, very closed, quite arrogant, focussed on things like financial management and takeover bids, business acquisition and those sort of things, which really seem ludicrous."

At the time of Mrs Daniel's arrival to her new position, the trust in charge of Furness General Hospital was subject to regulatory action following a cluster of five deaths in maternity in 2008.

But the quality of care was also amiss in other departments too, Mrs Daniel explained, including accident and emergency, governance, finances, staffing levels and the trust's outpatient system, which had led to the booking of 19,000 follow-up appointments being missed.

Mrs Daniel said: "You could see where some of that had come from.

"Lack of clinical leadership. Lack of, I think, good general management, the glue in the system."

The investigation team, lead by Dr Bill Kirkup, was told a massive improvement plan was implemented across the trust, including within maternity at the Dalton Lane hospital.

A total of £5m was spent on recruiting new staff in the first two years of Mrs Daniel's tenureship alone, with a further £3m since then while Barrow's special care baby unit, which she described as an "outdated facility" was upgraded.

A new £12m maternity unit is under construction at FGH with completion due in December 2017.

Mrs Daniel added: "I feel as confident, as I have in any other leadership role, our services are safe."

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