HOSPITAL bosses knew babies were dying in a dysfunctional maternity unit – but they did not believe the cases were linked, newly published interviews taken during a national investigation have revealed.

The devastating admission is given within transcripts of accounts given during the Morecambe Bay Investigation into deadly failings within Barrow's Furness General Hospital.

Details within the 100 documents show the catastrophic state of services awaiting mums and new babies at the hospital between 2004 and 2013 as well as appalling levels of management dysfunction within its parent trust.

RELATED ARTICLE: Full extent of poor care given to baby Joshua revealed in new investigation

The interviews, taken by patient safety expert Dr Bill Kirkup during 2014, paint a picture of a maternity unit running on skeleton staff who relied on failing and faulty equipment to monitor the welfare of women in labour and unborn babies – and where consultants were described as "untouchable".

Serious incidents in maternity were reported "more than once a month" but quickly "downgraded" following internal investigations and often not followed up.

Midwives taught each other mandatory skills training and increasing numbers of babies who needed special care "trickled" onto the general maternity ward instead of being admitted to the neo-natal unit.

Crucially, the man in charge of running the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, its former chief executive Tony Halsall, admitted in his interview with the investigation panel that senior leaders at the trust knew about a cluster of five deaths at FGH in 2008 – though he maintained he did not believe they were linked at the time.

Mr Halsall, who left UHMBT in 2012 with a £225,000 severance package and a secondment to the NHS Confederation, went on to weigh in on staff working within FGH's maternity department, stating many were not up to the job.

He said: "There are points in time when people just recruited.

"If you can get somebody to turn up with the right qualification and look alright we say 'right, ok,' who, in different circumstances in a competitive process, you might not have put in place.

"I think we had quite a few people in that guise."

Mr Halsall added: "We also knew that we had difficulties keeping people's skill levels up especially in terms of being in an isolated hospital and we had a fair bit of resistance from people who didn't see this as a problem."

Mr Halsall went on to label the Fielding Report, a document which should have alerted the trust to serious problems on the unit in 2010 but which was discovered languishing in a filing cabinet, as "a poor quality report" which was not "up to scratch".

He said the report had "got lost" while he was dealing with Monitor and the Care Quality Commission in a bid to achieve foundation trust status for the organisation.

The damning Morecambe Bay Investigation concluded 11 babies and one mother died as a direct result of poor care and a "toxic" culture at Barrow's hospital between 2004 and 2013.

A further five babies and two mothers might have been saved if they had received better care, the report states.

FGH midwife Lindsey Biggs, who was struck off the nursing and midwifery register last month for failing to properly care for baby Joshua Titcombe before he died, told Dr Kirkup during her interview that she had never been formally questioned about his case.

Ms Biggs, 38, said: "Considering I was a midwife involved in a case that happened in 2008, nobody has ever asked me what happened, nobody.

"Apart from my head of midwifery who phoned me at home to ask 'can you tell me what happened on your shift' and I did. But nobody else has ever asked me."

RELATED ARTICLE: Midwives failed in their care of baby Joshua, experts rule

Other interviewees who were among the 118 people to take part in the Morecambe Bay Investigation, include those who lost loved ones died at the unit, as well as staff members and local and national health leaders.

Further transcripts are set to be published in the new year.

Dr David Walker, UHMBT medical director, said: "The publication of the report of the Morecambe Bay Investigation was a watershed moment, not just for the trust but for those families and communities that have been so tragically let down by past failures.

He added: "It was important that we didn’t just treat the recommendations as a ‘check list’ of actions because we owed it to everyone involved to demonstrate we would truly learn from it.

"Building has started on our brand new maternity unit and it is due to be completed and handed over to the trust by December 2017.

"However, there is still a lot of work for us to do to further improve services across the trust and regain the trust of the public and we will continue to work with some of those involved in the Morecambe Bay Investigation and the wider communities to do so."

READ MORE: Musketeer midwife handed 'irregular' payoff, new documents show