Maternity and Neonatal Care

As the House knows, I am deeply concerned by the state of maternity care in the NHS that we inherited. While the majority of births go well, I know from the courage of families who have spoken up and the concern of staff that devastating impacts are arising from failures in care. That is why I asked Baroness Amos to chair an independent investigation into maternity and neonatal services to drive urgent action, but that has not stopped us from taking action in the meantime. We have invested more than £131 million to improve neonatal care facilities, brought in a new maternity care bundle, implemented a programme to reduce the two leading causes of avoidable brain injury during labour, and increased maternal mental health services. There is so much more to do, however, to guarantee safety now and into the future, and also to ensure truth, justice and accountability for past failures.[Official Report, 26 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 6WC.] (Correction)

The new maternal care bundle, to which the Secretary of State refers, is rightly aimed at reversing the recent worrying rise in maternal death and ill health. In particular, the increase in obstetric haemorrhage concerns so many midwives and doctors and the families affected. Given that the Government want to help women to make informed choices about how they give birth safely, can the NHS do more to highlight the well documented risks of severe bleeding and placenta accreta caused by caesarean sections?

Everyone accessing maternity care should be offered a personalised care and support plan, informed by a personalised risk assessment. That is so women have more control over their own care based on what matters to them and their individual needs and preferences, as well as to ensure that every woman understands the risk factors that might arise in her case. A caesarean section is generally a very safe procedure, but like any type of surgery, it carries a risk of complications. All women should have the confidence of knowing that the doctors and midwives dealing with them are robustly trained to deal with severe complications, including haemorrhage. That is why the maternity care bundle, as well as other measures, will lead to greater safety, more information and, crucially, the personalisation of care and patient choice for the mother.

I welcome the new maternal care bundle and its ambition to drive consistently high standards of care for every pregnant and new mum. It is great that maternal mental health is one of the five elements prioritised; I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his focus on that. The challenge now is to drive forward its implementation. Can he say more about how he intends to do that, and in particular how he will ensure that NHS staff are trained and confident enough to better screen and support women who are struggling with their mental health?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue, and I commend her for the work she is doing in this area. There is a real risk of post-natal depression. Certainly where there have been complications in birth or, worse still, injury or the most unimaginable experience of loss, we need to make sure that women and their partners and the wider families are supported from day one. That does not just mean training and support for staff and making sure that they are doing emotional wellbeing screening; it also means thinking more thoughtfully about estates. One thing that has really struck me is the experience of women who have suffered loss during labour who are asked, during the care that follows, to go back to the very maternity units where their unimaginable pain was first endured. Those are difficult issues to challenge, and it will require investment, but those are the sorts of areas we are getting into as we think more thoughtfully about how to ensure that we take care of not just the physical health of the mother and baby, but the mental health and wellbeing of mother and the wider family.

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.

An Oxford midwife recently told me that sewage regularly rises through the floor and drips down through the ceiling on to a hospital maternity ward. This has become so common that it is now standard procedure for midwives to move the clinic whenever it happens so that patients are none the wiser. Obviously if the hospital had the money to fix the problem it would have already done so, but equally obviously, the staff should be looking after mothers and babies, not shovelling sewage. Can the Secretary of State confirm that when the Amos review has done its work, there will be a flexible pot of money so that specific issues such as this in specific hospitals can be dealt with to improve patient safety and staff retention?

Without pre-empting Baroness Amos’s work, let me say that the hon. Lady is absolutely right. We need to give staff the tools that will enable them to do the job to the best of their ability, and they need the right facilities and environment in which they can work and patients can be cared for. It is completely unacceptable that on top of the other challenges that staff and families face at such an important time—the unique moment of bringing new life into the world—they are having to do so against the backdrop of crumbling estates that the hon. Lady has described. We are putting the largest ever capital investment into the NHS, but she has made a powerful point about the need for capital investment in this area, which was impressed on me at Queen’s hospital in Romford during one of my recent visits, and I will be looking at the issue very closely.

I recently visited the Dorset breastfeeding network at the Purbeck community centre, and it was fascinating to hear about the work that the team there are doing, but they told me that since covid, standard NHS antenatal classes have stopped and have never returned. As a result, women are not getting the information that they need in order to make informed choices, which is leading to various decisions about how they give birth and whether they breastfeed their babies. We know that the Pride in Place and Best Start in Life centres are going ahead, but they will not cover most of my area because they are covering only the deprived areas. How will we ensure that there is a universal offer for antenatal care for everyone?

I will make certain that my Department and the NHS look into what has happened to provision in the hon. Lady’s area, and I will write to her about it. She is quite right about the need to ensure that parents are given high-quality information from the time of conception so that they can make informed decisions about everything from whether to breastfeed through to the steps that they can take in those formative first 1,001 days to secure the best possible outcomes. I welcome the appointment of Will Quince to lead the 1,001 Critical Days Foundation; although in the past we have crossed swords in the House, I know how committed he is to that agenda.

I call the shadow Minister.

The maternity and neonatal plan is due in the spring, nearly two years after the Secretary of State took office. The maternity review has been delayed. There are no signs of the 1,000 additional midwives the Secretary of State said he would train. Gynaecology waiting lists are rising, with the number waiting for admission 6% higher than it was a year ago. The Secretary of State has an opportunity to save many lives, and I know that he wants to use all the opportunities available to him. May I ask him to concentrate on making more improvements in maternity care?

Let me just point out that in the 18 months for which I have had the privilege of holding this post, we have invested more than £131 million in 122 infrastructure projects across 49 NHS trusts to improve the safety of neonatal care facilities. We have implemented a new programme to reduce the two leading causes of avoidable brain injury during labour.[Official Report, 26 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 6WC.] (Correction) We have piloted Martha’s rule in maternity and neonatal units in 14 trusts across six regions to give patients and families the right to request a second opinion. We have launched a package of initiatives and interventions to reduce the number of still births, brain injuries, neonatal deaths and pre-term births. We have held a culture and leadership programme. We have created targeted tools and schemes to promote midwife retention. We have increased the provision of maternal mental health services to help women. We have had to do all that—not wasting a single day in 18 months. Imagine how embarrassed we would be if we had wasted 13 whole years!