Burnham was again promoted becoming Secretary of State for Health in June 2009. He held the post until the Labour government resigned after the 2010 general election. In July 2009, a month after he became health secretary, Burnham launched an independent inquiry chaired by the QC Robert Francis into unusually high mortality rates at Stafford Hospital. The inquiry found systematic failures at the hospital, and was critical of care provided by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. A wider public inquiry, also led by Robert Francis, was launched in 2010 by his successor as health secretary, Andrew Lansley. It found serious failings at the hospital but concluded it would be "misleading" to link those failings to a particular number of deaths. After leaving office, reports claimed that Burnham and his predecessor as health secretary, Alan Johnson, had rejected 81 requests for an inquiry sitting in public to examine the high rate of deaths at Stafford hospital. According to "The Daily Telegraph", after initial concerns were raised about links between mortality rates and standards of care in 2005, there were up to 2,800 more deaths than expected across 14 NHS trusts highlighted as having unusually high death rates. These figures for deaths were however discredited. A report, the Keogh Review, following an investigation into the 14 NHS trusts by Bruce Keogh, described the use of such statistical measures as "clinically meaningless and academically reckless".