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Tieng Anh Vui
England's NHS regulator is to review a decision not to name those behind a possible "cover-up" after a series of baby deaths at a Cumbria hospital.
A review of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) response to complaints about the Furness General Hospital deaths found a manager may have ordered the deletion of a report critical of the regulator.
The individual denies the allegations.
CQC chief executive David Behan said it was reviewing legal advice not to reveal the names of those involved.
He said the CQC would now see if they could be "put into the public domain".
It follows growing pressure to publicly name those involved.
More than 30 families have taken legal action against the hospital in relation to baby and maternal deaths and injuries from 2008.
'Deliberate cover-up'
Consultants Grant Thornton were asked by the health regulator to investigate its own failure to spot the problems: in 2010, Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, which ran the hospital, had been given a clean bill of health.
Grant Thornton found that, a year after this, with more concerns emerging, an internal review had been ordered into how the problems had gone unnoticed.
In March 2012 it was decided the findings should not be made public because the review was highly critical of the regulator.
That order is said to have come from a senior manager who has not been named and who denies the allegations.
The latest report said this "might well have constituted a deliberate cover-up".
On Thursday, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that was "completely unacceptable" and that there should be "no anonymity, no hiding place, no opportunity to get off Scot-free for anyone at all who was responsible for this".
And Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told BBC Two's Newsnight: "This feels like a public authority hiding behind the Data Protection Act - it's very common but you have to go by what the law says and the law is very clear.
"You have to process data fairly, you have to take into account people's expectation of confidentiality."
He said that was "obviously" the case with patient data in particular.
But when it came to officials, "there you have to apply a public interest test", he added.
He said he was "not convinced" the CQC had been correctly advised.
'Good faith'
Its chief executive, Mr Behan, said he had been advised that "to put people's personal data [into the report] would be a breach of their rights".
"I was acting on the legal advice I was given, I acted in good faith," he told Newsnight.
He said he had "listened to what the information commissioner has said".
He added: "We've decided today that we will review that legal advice and we've commissioned a review of that legal advice to see if we can put this information into the public domain."
In a statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday, Jeremy Hunt said the CQC was already introducing a tougher inspection regime and had just appointed a chief inspector of hospitals.
He added: "What happened at Morecambe Bay is, above, all a terrible personal tragedy for all the families involved.
"I want to apologise on behalf of the government and the NHS for all the appalling suffering they have endured."
The CQC has said it is "desperately sorry this has happened" and said publication "draws a line in the sand for us".
The publication of Wednesday's report comes four months after a public inquiry into the failings at another hospital - Stafford - criticised the culture of the NHS as more concerned with protecting "corporate self-interest" than patient care.
Mr Hunt told MPs the government was introducing measures to make the NHS more transparent, including a duty of candour to compel the health service to be open and honest about mistakes.
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