BABIES and mothers died amid major failings at a hospital trust in what is likely to be the NHS’s worst ever maternity scandal.

A leaked report shows a “toxic” culture stretching back 40 years was in place when babies and mothers suffered avoidable death.

Children were also left with permanent disability amid substandard care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.

Staff at the trust routinely dismissed parents’ concerns, were unkind, got dead babies’ names wrong and, in one instance, referred to a baby who died as “it”.

In another case, parents were not told their baby’s body had arrived back from the post-mortem examination and it was left to decompose so badly the family never got to say a final goodbye.

The interim report comes from an independent inquiry ordered by the Government in July 2017.

One mother who lost her baby daughter in 2009 after failings at the NHS Trust has called for police to step in and investigate claims of “avoidable” deaths.

The inquiry was launched following the efforts of Rhiannon and Richard Stanton Davies, whose daughter Kate died shortly after birth in 2009, and Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths, whose baby Pippa died soon after birth in 2016.

Mrs Davies said she still did not think the full scale of the problems at the trust’s maternity services had been exposed by a leaked interim report, which said staff routinely dismissed parents’ concerns.

Mrs Davies, whose daughter died after delays in transferring her from a community hospital to a doctor-led maternity unit, said: “The narrative that lessons have been learned has to change because lessons are not being learned.

“Everything within that (report) happened to us. I am going to push for the police to bring team still do not have case notes relating to hundreds of concerns raised about the trust.

“We do not know the scale of it even now,” the mum from from Hereford said. “I just want the police to move in and step in.

“We have been fighting as a family for ten-and-a-half years. It’s frustrating and it’s stressful, but we are fighting to save babies’ lives in our daughter’s name.

“I don’t trust anyone else other than the police now - there have been too many false promises for too long.”

The study warns that, even to the present day, lessons are not being learned and staff at the trust are uncommunicative with families.

It also points to an inadequate review carried out by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) in 2017 and the “misplaced” optimism of the regulator in charge in 2007.

The inquiry, which is being led by maternity expert Donna Ockenden, was launched by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Its initial scope was to examine 23 cases but this has now grown to more than 270 covering the period 1979 to the present day.

The cases include 22 stillbirths, three deaths during pregnancy, 17 deaths of babies after birth, three deaths of mothers, 47 cases of substandard care and 51 cases of cerebral palsy or brain damage.

The interim report written by Ms Ockenden details the pain suffered by the families.

It points to babies left brain-damaged because staff failed to realise or act upon signs that labour was going wrong a failure to adequately monitor heartbeats during labour or assess risks during pregnancy, resulting in the deaths of some children and babies left brain-damaged from group B strep or meningitis that can often be treated by antibiotics.

Other cases included a father whose only feedback following his daughter’s death was when he bumped into a hospital employee in Asda and multiple families “where deceased babies are given the wrong names by the trust - frequently in writing”.

The inquiry was launched following the efforts of Rhiannon and Richard Stanton Davies, whose daughter Kate died shortly after birth in 2009, and Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths, whose daughter Pippa died shortly after birth in 2016.

Ms Davies told The Independent the leaked report showed the trust’s chronic inability to learn from past mistakes had “condemned my daughter to death”, adding: “How has this been tolerated for so long? It is horrific.”

In the report, Ms Ockenden wrote: “No apology will be sufficient or adequate for families who lost loved ones to avoidable deaths, or whose experience of becoming a parent was blighted by poor care and avoidable harm.

“Many families have described to me how they live on a daily basis with the results of that poor care.”

The report also criticised the trust’s slow response in sending the inquiry medical records, clinical notes and other documents.