The trust received the money under a programme called the Maternity Incentive Scheme, which is run by NHS Resolution to encourage the health service to provide good maternity care.
Hospitals are asked to judge their performance against a range of standards, including listening to patients’ concerns, staffing levels and properly investigating deaths.
If a trust meets all 10 safety measures, it can get a rebate on its insurance premiums as well as a share of the money paid by trusts that do not meet all the goals.
For the past two years, the Leeds trust reported it had met all 10 standards and was paid £4,887,084 from the scheme.
But the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), published a damning report in June about maternity services at the trust.
Care was rated as inadequate, the lowest level, and it warned that women and babies were being exposed to “significant risk”.
The report prompted NHS Resolution to ask Leeds to re-examine its submissions to the Maternity Incentive Scheme. The subsequent review found not all safety standards had been met, forcing the trust to repay all the money it had received.
“The repayment of the award is long overdue and should be going back even further,” said Fiona Winser-Ramm, who lost her daughter Aliona in 2020 after what an inquest found to be a number of “gross failures” in the care they received.
“This provides yet further evidence for the need for a full, independent inquiry into the Leeds trust,” she said, believing this should be led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden.
Mrs Winser-Ramm was among a group of parents who met Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week and demanded an investigation into maternity services at the trust.
Streeting has so far refused to order such an inquiry but the families, who have all experienced poor maternity care, said they remained hopeful.
Over the past few months, dozens of families have told the BBC they received inadequate care at the trust.