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Professor John Robertson OBA
From BBC West Yorkshire today, the above and:
An NHS trust at the centre of concerns over its poor maternity services has had to repay almost £5m after wrongly claiming it provided safe care to mothers and their babies. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was paid the money after saying its services met safe standards of care and staffing.
But a subsequent investigation by the health service’s litigation arm, NHS Resolution, found the trust had not met the standards and asked for the money to be repaid to the NHS. But the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), published a damning report in June about maternity services at the trust.
Care was rated as inadequate, the lowest level, and it warned that women and babies were being exposed to “significant risk”.
Health Secretary, Wes Streeting is mentioned but is not blamed in any way despite Labour having been in government now for 15 months. Imagine this happened in Scotland – women and babies were being exposed to “significant risk!!” Imagine the BBC Scotland platforming of Jackie Baillie?
Is this scandal, new, unusual in NHS England? Not at all.
From BBC Health on 23 June 2025:
Health Secretary Wes Streeting, has said “we must act now” as he announced a national investigation into maternity care in England.
The announcement comes after a series of critical reports into maternity care over the past decade.
- In March 2015 an investigation found mothers and babies died unnecessarily at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust between 2004 and 2013 – the report described a dysfunctional culture with substandard clinical skills, poor risk assessments and a repeated failure to properly investigate cases and learn lessons.
- In March 2022 an investigation into services at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust found that more than 200 mothers and babies could have survived with better care.
- Then, in October that year, a review into maternity services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS trust found that at least 45 babies might have survived if they had been given proper treatment.
- And an ongoing review into the maternity care provided by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust, due to be completed next year, is set to be the biggest yet, with around 2,500 cases being examined.
- Meanwhile, an annual review in 2024 of units by inspectors at the Care Quality Commission found not a single one of the 131 units inspected received the top outstanding rating for providing safe care.
Dr Clea Harmer, chief executive of the baby loss charity Sands, said the national investigation was “much-needed and long-overdue”.
The ‘Scottish’ media are quiet. If they had something, they’d be all over it like nappy rash.
I searched for ‘Scotland maternity inspections substandard‘ – only English ‘hits’.
I searched the Healthcare Improvement Scotland site – nothing.
I tried ‘Scotland maternity hospital inspection concerns‘ – bingo!
As in the headline, only one minor concern in 2017 and another in 2013 but hey, using Reporting Scotland editorial standards, that’ll do. Get Gulhane or Baillie on the phone.
Equitable in Scotland?
See this from Stirling University researchers in the BMJ in 2019:
We found few differences in maternity care experience for women based on their physical or socioeconomic characteristics. Our findings indicate that maternity care in Scotland is generally equitable.
Further measures in Scotland:
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.
In 2024, 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.
Sources:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400409637/
Click to access 0110d-annual-data-report-scotland-web.pdfjohnrobertson834health, mental-health, news, nhs, politicsEdit
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