Parliamentary reporter @TrinderMatt

BLAME culture in maternity services is preventing safety lessons being learnt, MPs have warned, as they call for urgent action to save 1,000 more babies a year. 

Today’s wide-ranging report by the health & social care committee on maternity safety in England reveals evidence of a “defensive culture, dysfunctional teams [and] safety lessons not learned.”

The cross-party group, which includes Labour MPs Barbara Keeley and Sarah Owen, found that more than a third of Care Quality Commission ratings for maternity services identified requirements to improve safety — larger than in any other specialty.

And a separate report commissioned from an expert panel set up by the committee charges that the government’s overall progress in key areas such as safety, staffing and personalised care has been far too slow and requires improvement.  

About 1,000 more babies would live every year if British maternity services were as safe as those in Sweden, the committee said. It has called for an immediate increase in the maternity services budget of up to £350 million a year. 

Persistent health inequalities experienced by women in minority ethnic and deprived groups need to be tackled, the panel said, and compensation for maternity cases should also be based on whether an incident was avoidable rather than on proving clinical negligence. 

Expert panel chairwoman Professor Dame Jane Dacre stressed that boosting staffing numbers is essential, saying: “Maternity services must have the right number of staff, in the right place, at the right time and with the right skills — without that, progress will stall.”

Gill Walton, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Midwives, maternity support workers and other maternity staff have been working incredibly hard, under extraordinary pressure for many, many years to deliver the safest and best possible care.

“They have been doing this within a system that often fails them by not giving them the staff, resources, and modern facilities they need to do their jobs as safely as possible. These reports show that the government must step up and they must give our maternity services the staff and the money it needs, and they must do it quickly.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “No parent or baby should have to suffer from avoidable harm during childbirth. Maternity safety is an absolute priority for this government and we are on track to surpass our ambition for a 20% reduction in the stillbirth rate and the neonatal mortality rate.“A strong workplace culture only makes a difference when the NHS has the staff it needs, which is why we are growing the maternity workforce with a £95m recruitment drive.”