Professor John Robertson OBA
From BBC West Yorkshire today:
An independent inquiry into “repeated failures” at an NHS trust’s maternity units has been announced by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, following potentially avoidable harm to babies and mothers. Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) over the past five years may have been prevented. Streeting said a thorough investigation was required to understand what had “gone so catastrophically wrong” at the trust’s maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s University Hospital.
Imagine this referred to a Scottish health board with numbers of deaths like that. Imagine the media coverage and the comments of Jackie Baillie.
There is currently a ‘national’ investigation chaired by Baroness Amos into 14 trusts maternity services in NHS England, where in total around 500 neonatal deaths might have been avoided but these are the 8 most concerning for patients and local communities:
In the same period, last ten years, there has been only one investigation into maternity services in Scotland – NHS Lothian No evidence of baby deaths is in the report (below).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g3n2p0z8lo
The contrast in Scotland with England’s crisis-ridden NHS maternity services could not be sharper.
NHS England has to pay out more than twice as much as NHS Scotland for ‘maternity failings’
£1.3 billion was paid out in Scotland in 2024/205 compared to £27 BILLION in England:
https://www.cwj.co.uk/site/newsandevents/legalnews/costs_of_NHS_maternity_care_claims_revealed.html
Per head, that £1.3 billion becomes £13 billion, less than half the NHS England pay-outs of £27 billion.
Why might this difference exist?
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. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/2/e023282
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.
Today, 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.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400409637/
As for midwife supply, in 2023, the total number of midwives in Scotland had grown from 3 529 to 3612.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00620/
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.
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