Beleaguered NHS chief remains steadfast against resignation

Sir David said the “NHS lost its focus” and he conceded that he “was a part of that”.

However, he once again rebuffed calls for him to resign, saying he wanted to lead the NHS through coming health reforms.

Campaigners said that Sir David should be sacked following the publication of the Francis Report into serious failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

He was in charge of the regional health authority for 10 months between 2005 and 2006 – the height of the failings in care at the trust.

Giving evidence to the health select committee, Sir David said: “During that period, across the NHS as a whole, patients were not the centre of the way the system operated.

He added: “For a whole variety of reasons, not because people were bad but because there were a whole set of changes going on and a whole set of things we were being held accountable for from the centre, which created an environment where the leadership of the NHS lost its focus. I put my hands up to that and I was a part of that, but my learning from that was to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

He told MPs that the local health authority had “no idea” about the serious care failures at the trust – where patients were routinely neglected and as many as 1,200 could have died needlessly as a result of maltreatment and neglect.

Patients were left lying in their own urine and excrement for days, forced to drink water from vases or given the wrong medication.

“We had no idea,” he said. “The information was not bought to the strategic health authority, we did not see any of the information which would lead you to believe that there was all of this going on in Mid Staffordshire.”

Sir David added that he visited the hospital during the time when problems were emerging but was not alerted to neglect or poor care.