Government announces national investigation into maternity care in England

As a Solicitor specialising in maternity claims (particularly those involving stillbirth and neonatal death) I welcome today's announcement from Wes Streeting that the government will hold a national investigation into maternity care across England. I am passionate about improving safety for women and babies and anything which furthers this agenda is welcome as far as I am concerned. 

However, I cannot help but think that the inquiry will ask questions that we already have the answers to. Previous investigations into care at maternity services in Morcombe Bay, East Kent, Shrewsbury and Telford and Nottingham have all identified common themes. 

In September 2024 the CQC found that:

• 36% of the maternity units who responded ‘required improvement’; and
• 12% were ‘inadequate’.

The CQC identified the issues as lack of staff, insufficient training, failing to appropriately assess risks, failing to act in a timely way and failing to report incidences and near misses. 

This echoes my own experience in dealing with claims involving maternity care where failures to admit women in a timely manner, failures to correctly asses risk factors and interpret CTGs and failures to escalate when things are clearly going wrong appear to occur in almost every case. 

Therefore, while I welcome a more widespread investigation into maternity services across England, I anticipate that this will simply confirm what we already know.