Professor John Robertson OBA
From BBC Health today:
Dozens more parents demand maternity care inquiry – When Tassie Weaver went into labour at full term, she thought she was hours away from holding her first child. But, by the time she was giving birth, she knew her son had died. Doctors had previously told Tassie to call her local maternity unit immediately when she went into labour, she says, because her high blood pressure and concerns about the baby’s growth meant she needed monitoring.
But when she first phoned, despite being considered high risk, a midwife told her to stay at home. The couple are among 47 new families who have contacted the BBC with concerns about inadequate maternity care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals (LTH) NHS Trust between 2017 and 2024. These include parents who told us their babies died or had been injured, and women who described injury and trauma following inadequate care.
They had all seen our January investigation into the potentially avoidable deaths of 56 babies and two mothers at the trust between 2019 and 2024.
There is no mention of the then Tory health secretaries nor does any opposition politician get a platform to attack the then Tory government. Imagine this happened in Scotland?
How do the statistics compare?
In January 2024, the Daily Mail reporting a drop in the number of midwives, had:
Women are dying during childbirth at the same rates as two decades ago, ‘alarming’ new data shows. An independent review into maternity deaths showed 293 women died during pregnancy and within six weeks of giving birth between 2020 and 2022. Experts said the upward trend is the most compelling evidence yet that failures now span ‘across the entire maternity system’ and is ‘not just one or two hospitals.’
The overall rate in 2020-2022, was 13.41 deaths per 100 000 births and based on the graph in the Daily Mail piece was around 11.8 in 2020.
The rate in Scotland was 10.9 for 2018/2020, the most recent figures.
On 2 May 2025, the Scottish Government responded to a Freedom of Information request from, I’m guessing, a disappointed so-called health correspondent at BBC Scotland or the Herald, to reveal that spending, to improve maternity and neonatal services was £4.m in 2022/2023 up from around only £3m in the previous two years.
As for midwife supply:
In 2023, the total number of midwives in Scotland had grown from 3 529 to 3612.
Finally, a bit dated I know but from 2019:
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
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