Ex-health secretary Andy Burnham has denied claims Labour put England's healthcare watchdog under pressure to tone down its reports ahead of the 2010 general election.
The Care Quality Commission has been accused of a cover-up over its response to complaints about several deaths at Furness General Hospital in Cumbria.
The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen papers suggesting Labour pressure.
But Mr Burnham told Sky News he had never said "don't say that" to the CQC.
The controversy stems from the deaths of babies and mothers from 2008 at the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust-run hospital and how they were investigated.
More than 30 families have now taken legal action against the hospital.
The trust was given a clean bill of health in 2010 by the CQC.
But an investigation by consultants Grant Thornton into how deaths and injuries had gone unnoticed found a CQC report into the trust remained unpublished because it was decided it was too critical of the regulator.
Grant Thornton concluded this "might well have constituted a deliberate cover-up" by the CQC employees who deemed it should not be made public.
'Serious questions'The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen a cache of documents "which detail a regulator apparently intent on suppressing negative publicity about the NHS, amid political pressure from then-Labour ministers and their advisers before the election".
End Quote Andy Burnham on the Morecambe Bay NHS TrustI don't know whether concerns were raised as part of a more general meeting and I would have to review all the paperwork to provide that reassurance"
And, on Saturday, Morecambe and Lunesdale's Tory MP David Morris wrote an open letter to Mr Burnham saying there were "serious questions" for Mr Burnham and Labour to answer over the cover-up scandal including "how much pressure did you put on the CQC to tone down its criticism of hospitals?"
Mr Burnham, now shadow health secretary, told Sky News' Murnaghan programme he had "no immediate recollection" of having conversations about the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.
"I don't know whether concerns were raised as part of a more general meeting and I would have to review all the paperwork to provide that reassurance," he added.
"But I'm prepared to do that."
He said it was significant that he speeded up the introduction of a system for assessing and registering NHS hospitals while he was health secretary.
"The central allegation that I was kind of, in that period, trying to say 'don't do anything, don't say anything, don't bring any problems out, keep them all hidden' is fundamentally disproved by the decisions I took in relation to the expediting the registration of hospitals," he said.
He said it was important to stress that "this cover-up, the deletion of the report, happened on this government's watch - not on our watch."
On Friday, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there should be "very, very serious consequences" for anyone found guilty of a cover-up at the CQC.
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