Superbug scandal: 'There's no doubt my lovely mother-in-law was murdered,' says Bucks Fizz's Cheryl Baker

Standing on the doorstep was a courier with a letter from her NHS Trust acknowledging that conditions at Maidstone Hospital in Kent, where Doreen Ford had undergone chemotherapy, had almost certainly been responsible for her death.

Since the 77-year-old succumbed to the Clostridium difficile infection in October last year, Cheryl has fought a very public battle to highlight the conditions her mother-in-law was nursed in.

Yesterday, she was vindicated by the Healthcare Commission's report.

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Last night Cheryl, who is married to Doreen's stepson Steve, said: "The hospital sent a letter which I had to sign for, obviously wanting to be sure I got it ahead of the report.

"It was signed by Amy Page, the chief nurse, and says: "We accept that the standard of care and infection control practices should have been better in the past, and we are doing everything we can to be sure they are better now and in the future."

"It made me laugh - this was the first time they have ever accepted responsibility."

Cheryl, mother to 13-year- old twins, was horrified by the Commission's findings.

"I was appalled by the sheer negligence revealed in the report. The trust ignored the first outbreak of C. diff, acting as if nothing had happened for four months until it struck again.

"The fact is, it's too late for Doreen - there is no doubt in my mind she was effectively murdered. I am really glad the police are now going to investigate to see if they can bring a case of corporate manslaughter."

Doreen was diagnosed with breast cancer after doctors found a lump five years before her death.

The tumour was removed and surgeons thought the operation was so successful that she didn't need chemotherapy.

"But then her stomach started to enlarge and she was losing weight," says Cheryl.

"They said her spleen was cancerous and they needed to remove it, but they couldn't do that until she'd had aggressive chemotherapy at Maidstone Hospital.

"This started about three months before her death and it knocked her sideways. It didn't suit her at all.

"After her second course, she contracted C. diff. She was put in a little isolation ward in the oncology unit at Maidstone Hospital. They gave her antibiotics and she came home.

"But a week later, she fell ill again and went back into hospital for another course of antibiotics. They gave us a leaflet saying C. diff could be fatal, but it's only in small print just to cover their backs.

"She had to keep going in and out of hospital, until it was getting on her nerves. But on October 6, she told her partner Harry she felt better than she had for a long time.

"She had just received a letter from her doctor saying the size of her spleen had reduced so significantly they didn't think it would be necessary to have the next dose of chemotherapy. She was very happy and went shopping with Harry.

"On Saturday morning, Doreen collapsed. We took her to her bedroom and laid her on the bed. It was as if she had no strength at all.

"Doreen had changed completely overnight. Her face was grey and drawn. However ill she may have been, she always made sure she looked like the Queen Mother. This day, she didn't. She was admitted to hospital with Harry by her side.

"At 10.30pm the next night, the hospital called Harry saying he'd better come in again to see Doreen because she had taken a turn for the worse.

"Steve took Harry to the hospital, only to be told by a nurse Doreen had passed away about an hour ago. It was the biggest shock to me because everything had always been fine before. Now, all of a sudden, she was dead.

"When we went to the hospital the next day, they said she died from septicaemia caused by the C. diff."

Cheryl was so incensed by her mother-in-law's death she began a campaign to end the scandal of filthy wards, taking part in a Tonight With Trevor McDonald show on dirty hospitals last year.

She says: "I had heard horror stories from the many people who contacted me about their own relatives' terrible experiences after the TV programme came out.

"One man, whose own mother-in-law had died after contracting the superbug, had filmed cleaners dragging bags of waste across the hospital floor and not cleaning up the trail.

"He also filmed dried blood on the floor which was not cleaned up, and which the hospital later claimed was coffee stains.

"And he filmed bags of soiled sheets next to freshly laundered ones so that the risk of contamination was obvious. Despite this, I was still shocked by the Healthcare Commission report."

Cheryl believes if it hadn't been for her campaign and the subsequent media coverage, nothing would have been done to clean up Maidstone Hospital and patients would still have been dying unnecessarily.

Her experience with health chiefs shortly after Doreen's death would suggest she was right. A meeting with Rose Gibb, the NHS Trust's chief executive who resigned last week, left Cheryl incensed.

"Instead of promising to clean the hospital's act up, she suggested Doreen had brought the bug in with her," she says.

And despite the report, it seems important lessons have still not been learned: "They are still putting out alcohol gels everywhere for people to wash their hands, although it's known that alcohol doesn't destroy C. diff - you need soap and water for that.

"Clearly the Trust is liable. But I also blame the Government for giving the Trusts budgets to adhere to without regard for patients' health.

"Hygiene and patient care come way down the list now the NHS is run by accountants and hospitals have to balance their budgets. People are dying, killed as a result of policy.

"Doreen wasn't just a granny to our kids or a mother-in-law to me. She was a good friend, and that's why it's my duty to make her death mean something."

One can only imagine Cheryl's horror when Harry himself had to go into the same hospital to be treated for heart failure last month.

"It's our local hospital so there was really no choice," she says.

"But when I heard he had been put on the Whatman ward my heart sank - that was where Doreen had been treated, and also a neighbour who died of C.diff soon after.

"In fact, it was known as the "C. diff ward" and I worried that Harry would never come home."

Thankfully, he has returned, apparently well.

The family draw some comfort from the knowledge that Doreen's unnecessary death may have ultimately saved others from the same fate.

But there's still an empty seat in the sprawling kitchen of their Kent home where she would once be sat with a glass of wine and a crossword.