Stillbirths tell you a lot about a country. Poorer and more unequal countries have higher levels. Scotland, thanks to the legacy of the Union, has stubborn levels of poverty and inequality yet a low stillbirth level. This is due, in the main, to the quality of care mothers receive, countering the effects of poverty and inequality.

In 2017, BBC Scotland reported that the rate per 1 000 live births in Scotland was 4.72, in Nordic countries it was 4.3 but for the UK it was 5.61.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40366637#:~:text=Scotland%20is%20close%20to%20the,deaths%2C%20according%20to%20a%20report.&text=The%20rate%20of%20stillbirths%20and,of%204.3%20in%20Nordic%20countries.

In Scotland, stillbirths have been falling dramatically from 2011 in the years of SNP government to only 171 last year, after a long plateau of minimal improvement and spikes under Labour.

In England and Wales, the level has fallen too, from 2 873 in 2017 to 2 689 in 2018.

The population of England and Wales is 10.88 times higher than Scotland so if the stillbirth rates were the same, there would be 1 860 but there were 2 873, more than 1 000 more.

The stillbirth rate in England and Wales is, per head of population, 55% higher.