The memory of the last weeks of her mother’s life is seared onto the brain of Deb Hazeldine, 56 years old.Ellen Linstead was 67 years old, in remission from bone cancer, when she was admitted to Mid Stafford Hospital in September 2006 for physiotherapy following a fall at home.“I was not even on the ward yet, I was in the [hospital] corridor, and I heard mum screaming, and I dropped my bag and ran to her,” Deb remembers today, talking from her car. “I got into her room, she was half on the floor and she was half on the commode, and she grabbed hold of my hand, and she said, ‘Please, Deb, don’t let me die in here.’”Weeks later, Ellen died in heartbreaking conditions at Mid Staffordshire Hospital in December 2006. Her death marked the start of a seven-year battle, alongside a small group of bereaved families, to uncover the truth about the neglect and poor care that led to the deaths of hundreds of patients at the scandal-hit hospital. Their grit and determination would lead to the exposure of one of the biggest NHS scandals England had ever seen, and changes to the system designed to stop it from ever happening again.However, for almost a decade before the concerns of Deb and other bereaved families were vindicated, their calls for a deeper investigation were repeatedly rejected by Labour government ministers, one of whom is now front and centre of the party’s leadership fight – Andy Burnham.Burnham launching his by-election campaign in Makerfield – with hopes to challenge for Labour leadership (Getty)It will soon be the 20th anniversary of Debs’s mother’s avoidable death, and Andy Burnham’s campaign to be Labour’s next leader is a reminder to her of the darkest chapter of her life.“The only thing I would say is, when I think of Andy Burnham, the King of the North, could I just ask him: was my mum not northern enough? Was Staffordshire not north enough for him? That's how it felt. It just felt like we people in the Midlands just got completely forgotten.”During those terrible years of trying to get justice for her mum and the many other patients who had died in appalling circumstances, she said Burnham “point-blank refused” to meet families during those years.“My mum’s memory was not worth a second of his time and I don’t know why.”‘The secret inquiry’The Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal – often dubbed the “Mid Staffs scandal” – remains one of the worst failures of care in the history of the NHS.It centred on Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, particularly Stafford Hospital, between 2005 and 2009. During that period, hundreds of patients suffered horrific neglect and poor treatment, with estimates of between 400 and 1,200 more people dying than would normally have been expected, although the exact figure remains disputed.Ellen (right) died in December 2006 following a series of care failings by Mid Staffordshire Hospital (Family handout)A subsequent inquiry found appalling conditions at the hospital. Patients had been left in soiled bedding for hours, there were long delays in treatment, and cries for help were ignored. Patients often went long periods without food or water in a hospital facing severe nursing shortages, with a work culture that discouraged staff from speaking out.Over the four months while she was in hospital, Ellen Linstead contracted Clostridium difficile and MRSA, suffered two falls, breaking her spine, and, at one point, Deb discovered that her mum had not been fed. She had also been left screaming in pain and in dirty, unchanged sheets.In December 2006, Linstead died, but it took four years for the trust to admit that her cause of death had been C difficile.Andy Burnham was the health secretary for Labour between June 2009 and 11 May 2010 during the later stages of the Mid Staffordshire scandal. Before that, he had been a health minister under Alan Johnson.Following a critical report by the Healthcare Commission in 2009, Burnham announced an independent inquiry by Sir Robert Francis, but during this time, despite families’ concerns, Burnham and his predecessor, Alan Johnson, reportedly refused 81 requests for a statutory public inquiry. It wasn’t until Labour lost power in 2010 that his successor, Andrew Lansley, converted this into the full statutory public inquiry that has become known as the Francis Inquiry, which would lead to more than 200 recommendations for systemic change.Sixty seven-year-old Ellen was one of the hundreds of patients between 2005 and 2009 who were found to have died avoidably due to poor care at Mid Stafford Hospital.Recalling the fight she faced after her mother’s death, Hazeldine told The Independent: “The thing with Andy Burnham that still hurts to this day is that my mum’s death was not worth his time. He would never meet with the relatives.”“I just wish they’d [politicians] spent one second on a ward like I had, to know what that was like to be terrified of leaving your mum, to be worried, to not want to leave her on her own. Every day, getting more desperate, knowing she wasn't going to come home because she wasn’t going to survive that poor care.“If I could let politicians live with my memories for one hour, it would never happen again.”Linstead was one of the hundreds who died due to poor care at Mid Staffordshire Hospital (Family handout)‘Soul destroying’For Deb, the refusal by Burnham and his predecessor to meet families was “soul-destroying”.“It was so disrespectful to my mum’s memory, and the reason that I did the campaign is that I knew I would never be able to put my head on a pillow and rest again and have a good night's sleep, or any sleep, if I had not tried to ensure just one mum went home [from hospital] because my mum didn't.”For Deb and the families campaigning alongside her, the initial independent inquiry ordered by Burnham was never going to be enough. She said: “We [families] called it the ‘secret inquiry’ because nobody was subpoenaed, nobody knew what evidence had been given.“I’d always say: ‘Would that have been good enough for his mum?’ Because if not, why should it be good enough for mine?” ‘Defending reputations’It would be years after her mother died that Deb would know the full truth of how and why her mother died.“I didn't have the full picture and all of the jigsaw puzzles until seven years later, the best part of a decade,” she remembers today, adding: “It always felt to me personally that mum died in a time of no bad news allowed. That's how it felt, and it was, ‘No, we won't highlight that, we won't deep dive into it, don't look into it.’“I would go to bed at night, and I’d ask myself: how can we ever prevent this from happening again until we know how this happened?”In 2010, when the Conservative government came into power and health secretary Andrew Lansley finally granted the public inquiry the Mid Staffs families had been asking for, it was again chaired by Sir Robert Francis. It concluded in 2013 with 290 recommendations for the hospital, NHS, healthcare regulators and government.The report brought about sweeping changes, including new legislation which required providers to notify patients and families when things go wrong in their care, and resulted in an overhaul of the Care Quality Commission’s inspection regime.As a result, a further review of trusts with the highest mortality rates was carried out, and 14 NHS trusts were placed into a special measures programme.Robert Francis led the landmark Mid Staffordshire inquiry in the 2010s, but major scandals keep on happening (PA)In the 20 years since the Francis inquiry report, Ellen missed the chance to see her granddaughter grow up, birthdays and Christmases. In 2018, Deb was awarded an MBE for her services to patient safety after years of campaigning. Four years earlier, when challenged on why he had not called a full public inquiry, Burnham defended his position by telling reporters that the government at the time thought that, as the hospital might not survive a public inquiry, its focus would be drawn to “defending reputations”.However, Deb, who helped form a campaign group called Cure the NHS, said the hospital’s reputation is likely to have recovered more quickly had a public inquiry been granted sooner.She added: “And out of those 290, your recommendations, just which one of them does [Andy Burnham] think that we didn’t need?”‘Bad news’Deb said she felt the public inquiry had not been granted by the Labour government because there was “a tendency to want to cover up the failures of what could have happened under the Labour government...”“I think it would have shone a light on the whole of the NHS and they [Labour] tend to like to hold that [the NHS] up as theirs, don't they?”If Burnham ever makes his way to Westminster, he will face new calls for a public inquiry by families harmed by NHS maternity failures. Campaigning families in Leeds, Sussex and Nottingham called for Wes Streeting, who was health secretary until very recently, to launch a single public inquiry rather than the current multiple independent inquiries being carried out.Streeting resisted those calls and is now no longer in a position to see them through. If the King of the North ever gets crowned prime minister, families will be watching closely to see if history will repeat itself, or if crucial lessons have been learned.Andy Burnham was approached for comment.