Maternity Safety Strategy — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement. At the outset, may I pay tribute, as he has done, to the hon. Members who have spoken out so movingly in recent months about baby loss? They include, as he has said, the hon. Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), and my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). They are all a credit to the House. Our national health service offers some of the best neonatal care in the world, and the progress set out by the Secretary of State today is a tribute to the extraordinary work of midwives and maternity staff across the country. We welcome his announcement that all notifiable cases of stillbirth and neonatal death in England will now receive an independent investigation by the healthcare safety investigation branch. That is an important step, which will help to bring certainty and closure to hundreds of families every year We also welcome the move by the Secretary of State to allow coroners to investigate stillbirths. May I assure him that the Opposition stand ready to work constructively with him to ensure the smooth and timely passage of the relevant legislation, should he and the Government choose to bring any before the House? I also pay tribute to the work carried out by the team at the University of Leicester that leads on the perinatal aspects of the maternal, newborn and infant clinical outcome review programme, which provided the evidence for today’s announcement The number of deaths during childbirth has halved since 1993, saving about 220 lives a year, but we welcome the Secretary of State’s ambition to bring forward to 2025 the target date for halving the rate of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth. If that target is to be delivered, however, it is essential that NHS units providing these services are properly resourced and properly staffed. We welcome the launch of the Atain e-learning programme, as well as the increased training for consultants on the care of pregnant women with significant health conditions. We also welcome the emphasis on smoking cessation programmes, but we should remind the Secretary of State that public health budget cuts mean that many anti-smoking programmes have been cut back across the country The Secretary of State will know that the heavy workload in maternity units was among the main issues identified by today’s study, which found that "service capacity" issues in maternity units affected over a fifth of the deaths reviewed. Earlier this year, our research revealed that half of maternity units had closed their doors to mothers at some point in 2016, with staffing and capacity issues being the most common reasons for doing so. The Royal College of Midwives tells us that we are about 3,500 midwives short of the number needed. A survey published by the National Childbirth Trust this year showed that 50% of women having a baby experienced what the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence describes as a red flag event, which is an indicator of dangerously low staffing levels, such as a women not receiving one-to-one care during established labour We therefore believe that the NHS remains underfunded and understaffed. I would be grateful to the Secretary of State if he told us what further action he intends to take to ensure that maternity services are properly funded and to address the staffing shortages as part of a full strategy to improve safety across the board. The NHS has excellent psychological and bereavement support services for women affected by baby loss, but we all know that the quality of those services remains variable across the country. Indeed, we are still a long way from full parity of esteem for mental health in neonatal care. What action does the Secretary of State intend to take to plug these gaps Overall, this welcome set of announcements from the Secretary of State may help the NHS to provide the best quality of care for all mothers and their babies. The Opposition look forward to working constructively with the Secretary of State and the Government, but I hope he can reassure us that they will provide the resources that NHS midwives and their colleagues need to deliver on these ambitions.