NHS maternity services in England need a radical overhaul, the government has said, after a damning report found women and babies were being failed “on a scale that shames our society”.
The rapid review by Baroness Valerie Amos found too many women were not being “listened to, heard or believed”, with racism and discrimination “embedded throughout the system”.
Health Secretary James Murray said new national standards for emergency maternity care would be published this week, alongside plans to create 1,000 temporary midwifery posts.
But another of the report’s key recommendations – the creation of a maternity commissioner to oversee improvements – was strongly criticised by some families.
Emily Barley, whose daughter Beatrice died at Barnsley hospital in 2022, told the BBC the idea was “fundamentally dangerous” and placed too much power in the hands of one person.
Other groups representing families reacted with disappointment to the report, which was ordered by then health secretary Wes Streeting last summer, external.
The Birth Trauma Association described it as a “huge missed opportunity” with the views of staff given too much weight compared to the experiences of patients.
“It is devastating to see that so little of what women told Baroness Amos is reflected,” said chief executive Dr Kim Thomas.
She said injuries caused by forceps deliveries and the impact of post-traumatic stress on women and their partners were not mentioned.
Speaking in the House of Commons, James Murray said the report painted a “bleak picture” of failings across maternity services, spanning pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal care.
“Too often families have been sneered at, disbelieved, blamed and lied to,” he said.
“We know from review after review that wrongdoing is being covered up and that bullying towards staff who try to sound the alarm is rife.”
Murray said that the new temporary midwife posts would be created this year with an extra £41m also made available to upgrade “rundown” maternity and neonatal facilities.
But he was unable to confirm a timeline for appointing the new national maternity commissioner, telling BBC Breakfast his team would “move as quickly as we can” to make it happen.
Earlier, maternity investigator Donna Ockenden, who led a recent investigation into failings in Nottingham and was one of those tipped for the new role, suggested she may not accept the job if offered it.
“Maternity services have not improved in the last two years, and my concern now is, can one person actually fix this system?” she told Times Radio.
She said that she was grateful to Baroness Amos for pulling together evidence from across England but felt she had not learnt anything new after reading the report.
“I am disappointed that we’re seeing the same themes over and over again,” she said. “What we need to do is get on and fix the problem.”
Another safety expert, Dr Bill Kirkup, who investigated maternity services in Morecambe Bay and East Kent, resigned as one of Amos’s clinical advisers.
He is understood to have disagreed over her finding that a drive in some maternity units for normal (vaginal) birth, including denying women caesarean sections, was not prevalent nationally.
