NHS chief says sorry to Andy Burnham for Tory 'smear' campaign

  'Furious' Bruce Keogh apologises to shadow health secretary after government attack on Labour over hospital trust deaths

NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh is said to be furious about the Conservative 'political operation' concerning his report into deaths at hospital trusts.

The medical director of the NHS, Sir Bruce Keogh, has privately apologised to the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, over the Tories' "political operation" to use his report into the death rates at 14 hospital trusts as an attack on Labour's record.
Keogh told Burnham that he was sorry about the smear campaign led by Conservative MPs and officials in the days immediately before and after publication of his report.
It is understood that Keogh was furious that his findings had been used to blame Labour for the unnecessary deaths of 13,000 patients, a figure that he did not recognise. Keogh was overheard apologising to Burnham, the former Labour health secretary at the centre of the attacks, when the two men were at government offices on Millbank, where the Sky and BBC political teams are based.
A source at the offices said Keogh told Burnham, "Andy, I'm so sorry", and appeared to show his disgust at what Keogh described as a "political operation". Burnham was overheard insisting that Keogh had "nothing to apologise for", adding: "It's a good report."
Burnham, who prime minister David Cameron called on Labour leader Ed Miliband to sack over the findings in the Keogh report, declined to comment on "a private conversation". An NHS spokesman said Keogh had been called away on family business and was not contactable.
However, an email exchange between Keogh and an unnamed individual, who criticised newspaper reports claiming that the review had found 13,000 unnecessary deaths, reveals something of the NHS boss's thinking. Keogh wrote: "I agree with your sentiments entirely. Not my calculations, not my views. Don't believe everything you read, particularly in some newspapers."
Labour has been enraged by what it claims is "low politics" inspired by Cameron's controversial strategist Lynton Crosby. Last week the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, claimed that the mortality figures for 2011-12 published by Keogh made Labour's "darkest moment". Hunt added: "If founding the NHS is considered Labour's proudest achievement, today is their darkest moment as a Labour government is exposed as caring more about its own reputation than our most vulnerable citizens in the NHS."
But the Keogh report into 14 hospitals with high death rates uncovered "mediocrity" rather than a disaster on the scale of the Mid Staffs NHS Trust, where up to 1,200 people are thought to have needlessly died. The report said none of the hospitals investigated was providing "consistently high-quality care to patients", and all 14 trusts have been ordered to act on recommendations set out by health officials. Keogh is understood to have gone out of his way to stress that problems in the NHS were the fault of decades of under-investment, not the actions of one political party or group of ministers.