Maternity made up close to £35bn of the total £60bn set aside for future negligence payments, the NHS Resolution 2025-26 annual report shows – almost 60 per cent of the total bill.
In total, the health service paid out a record £3.24bn in clinical negligence compensation and associated costs in 2025-26 across all specialities, a figure described as “staggering”.
Last month, a report by Donna Ockenden, a senior midwife, into Nottingham University Hospitals found more than 500 mothers and babies died or suffered avoidable harm because of a “toxic” culture where women were ignored, bullied and repeatedly denied timely care.
The inquiry found women were too often urged to stay at home despite desperate pleas for admission. Investigators blamed a misguided “quest for a normal birth” for delaying life-saving intervention in some cases.
The latest negligence figures suggest the NHS is still paying the price for repeated failures to listen to women, investigate mistakes and implement recommendations made by successive maternity inquiries.
Emily Barley, from the Maternity Safety Alliance, said: “Every day, lives are stolen and families are torn apart by NHS maternity services, and these new figures show that the number of mums, babies and families affected by completely avoidable harm and death continues to grow.
“The crisis is driven by basic failings in care – mums crying, bleeding and begging for help being sneered at and turned away, cultures among staff of racism and bullying, and an overriding complacency and callousness among the NHS leaders and regulators who are supposed to keep us safe.”
The alliance, a group of families bereaved by NHS maternity services, said: “It is now clear that a statutory public inquiry is the only way to unpick this rotten mess and make it safe to have a baby in this country.”
James Murray, the Health Secretary, has promised an action plan by the end of the year.
But Ms Ockenden has said the NHS did not have “the luxury of six months” to produce a plan while women and babies remained at risk.
The senior midwife’s findings came days before a national maternity review became engulfed in controversy.