Maternity review: “cannot be a substitute for action” with women and babies dying

EMBARGO: Immediate release 

Responding to the announcement that 14 NHS trusts will have their maternity services examined, Liberal Democrat Hospitals and Primary Care spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller MP said:

“It is a national scandal that countless mothers are being failed by unsafe maternity services. The consequences are deadly, with women and babies dying, and families put through unimaginable trauma.

“Women, doctors and midwives feel trapped in a system where nothing changes and the same errors are repeated review after review.

“We welcome the Government’s acknowledgement that the crisis in our maternity units cannot be ignored any longer but their review goes nowhere near far enough. There needs to be a statutory national inquiry to lay out the issues facing wards across the country.

“Any review cannot be a substitute for action, this is a problem that is already upon us and affects people everyday. The Government needs to reverse their cuts to key maternity improvement funding and to implement all of the actions from the Ockenden Review immediately.”

ENDS

Notes to Editor:

In April the government announced cuts to the national Service Development Funding (SDF) for maternity services from £95m in 2024-25 to just £2m in 2025-26. The fund had been introduced following the Ockenden Review into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford to improve the quality of maternity care.