{"id":24979,"date":"2025-07-26T11:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T11:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24979\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T11:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T11:26:25","slug":"difficult-state-of-nhs-maternity-care-is-due-to-tory-inaction-inquiry-head-says-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24979\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Difficult\u2019 state of NHS maternity care is due to Tory inaction, inquiry head says | NHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the UK\u2019s most senior midwives has said inaction by the previous government over maternity care failures has led to the \u201cdifficult\u201d situation in wards across England<\/a> and a rise in reports of birth trauma.<\/p>\n

Donna Ockenden, who is leading the biggest inquiry in NHS history into maternity failures in Nottingham, said the Conservatives<\/a> had been given a \u201cblueprint\u201d for how to improve maternity services but that it had not been implemented.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the current government has inherited a really, really difficult picture around perinatal care, birth care and increasing reports of birth trauma. If only the previous government had done what it said it would do, that inheritance would have been very different,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ockenden is leading a review into maternity services at the Nottingham university hospitals NHS<\/a> trust, the largest inquiry into a single service in the history of the NHS, with 2,406 affected families taking part. The findings will be published in June 2026.<\/p>\n

She expressed frustration over the slow pace of change after her report on the Shrewsbury and Telford maternity scandal, which found that 300 babies had died or been left brain-damaged<\/a> as a result of inadequate care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe published [that report] in March 2022 and there were 22 immediately essential actions, as well as hundreds of actions for the NHS trust,\u201d she said. \u201cBut with the chaos that followed in the year before the general election, things got lost and we are not as far ahead with those immediately essential actions as we should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guardian analysis has found that the NHS is facing a \u00a327bn bill for maternity failings<\/a> in England since 2019, significantly more than the health service\u2019s approximately \u00a318bn budget for newborns in that time.<\/p>\n

Ockenden said the figures left her \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d, and she stressed that the cost of avoidable maternity harm was felt across \u201cmental health, other health services, the economy, the wider community, relationships, whole families and careers\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the way it should be. I would absolutely not say that families do not deserve compensation when they have a poor outcome, but rather that if the money was invested upfront into making the service safer, then we could make significant strides towards reducing this very significant harm,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said maternity wards were also dealing with problems caused by high levels of poverty across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of families, mothers and children living in destitution \u2013 which sounds very Victorian, but I do see examples of that. I hear about it from across the country and I see examples of real deprivation in Nottinghamshire,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaternity services are not an island. What comes in the front door of a maternity unit is that which is out there on our streets, whether that\u2019s women living in refugee status, in homeless hostels, women who come to antenatal clinics hungry because it\u2019s a choice between giving their children something for breakfast or [the women] eating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, criticised what he described as \u201cthe normalisation of deaths of women and babies\u201d and said: \u201cWe have women who are classed as having a normal birth still leaving traumatised and scarred.\u201d<\/p>\n

He announced a national investigation<\/a> into NHS maternity services in England, along with a national maternity and neonatal taskforce comprising a panel of experts and bereaved families.<\/p>\n

Ockenden said the news was \u201cencouraging\u201d and that \u201chearing, amplifying and acting upon family voices must be the golden thread that runs through it all\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is my hope that the changes outlined in these plans improve perinatal services today and in the future, and drastically reduce the risk of harm. Women<\/a> and families deserve safe maternity care, always,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the UK\u2019s most senior midwives has said inaction by the previous government over maternity care failures…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-24979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}