The Scotsman is desperately trying to build a reputation on death and despair in maternity wards. So far, it’s shoddy, fail, do not resubmit, leave the course.
In classic churnalist mode, they’ve just added up incidents treating unlike things as if they were the same type of incident because the boards themselves do not use one shared set of terms, to get a big number for the headline. A serious (or significant) adverse event is the incident itself: something that could have caused, or did cause, harm. A serious/significant adverse event review (SAER) is the investigation commissioned afterwards. The article’s headline total of “nearly 500 serious adverse events” includes both so is often double-counting incidents. Some boards gave event counts; others gave the number of reviews completed. NHS Grampian, for example, only disclosed themes and said at least 37 SAE reviews were completed. Those are not interchangeable, so the combined figure is not a clean count of incidents.
Notably, as often before, we don’t get to see what the trend is. Commonly, such media reports conceal the trend and focus on the scary total, because the trend was a major disappointment to them and would have been encouraging for us – down.
There is, however, a more credible and reliable metric – the cost of settling negligence lawsuits.
From our 4 July 2026 report:
In the Guardian 19 February 2026, the above and:
The NHS will have to spend more money settling lawsuits involving negligence during childbirth after a supreme court ruling that lawyers said puts right a “historic injustice”. The court ruled on Wednesday that children in England who suffer catastrophic injuries while they are being born can claim damages for future earnings they would otherwise have had.
The ruling on “lost years damages” means that children whose life expectancy is shortened can recover compensation for being unable to work. It comes amid mounting concern at the rising cost of medical negligence to the NHS in England – its liabilities have hit £60bn – much of which is due to errors made during childbirth. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/18/nhs-spend-more-settle-lawsuits-negligence-childbirth-supreme-court
From 2015/16 to 2024/2025, NHS England paid out out £5.97bn for maternity negligence.4
With a tenth of the population but the same troubles in maternity services, Scotland would have paid out £597m.
For the, I appreciate slightly different ten year period, 2013/14 to 2022/23 (the only comparable study I can find), it was £177.89m5, less than one third.
Using two slightly varying (2 years-off) sets of data would be problematic if the difference was small but at more than 3 times higher we can be confident that the contrast is reliable.
Sources:
- https://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.scot/publications/media-release-inspection-report-royal-infirmary-of-edinburgh-nhs-lothian/
- https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1983476698260623709
- https://www.cwj.co.uk/site/newsandevents/legalnews/costs_of_NHS_maternity_care_claims_revealed.html
- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.01.26352218v1.full.pdf
- https://www.nss.nhs.scot/media/4788/cnoris-annual-report-2022-2023.pdf
How bad are things in NHS England’s maternity units for such a difference in pay-outs to settle negligence.
Surely it cannot be any worse than the problems Anas Sarwar has found at the QEUH?
Just last week, on BBC Breakfast, we hear of a joint BBC News/New Statesman, external investigation into maternity care at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (UH Sussex) which has found:
- At least 55 babies who died may have survived with better care between 2019 and 2023
- A review of nine stillbirths in 2021 and 2022 found missed opportunities in all cases
- External investigators warned that a “normal birth” culture (one that seeks to promote vaginal delivery with minimal medical intervention) was causing concern
- Payments for maternity errors at the trust were the highest in England last year
No government nor former government minister is associated, in the BBC Health report, with these horrific figures. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2n644l44o
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Yes, it is a misuse of the term ‘serious’. As you indicate, in the data tables there is not a lot of nuance in the term. Most of the things which are recorded can, potentially, have ramifications, but are almost always resolved on the spot.
When my daughter was being born, there was the usual range of equipment monitoring the baby’s heart rate. As my wife strained in labour, she accidentally dislodged a plug from the monitoring equipment, which resulted in an alarm sounding. The only person who actually saw the plug falling out was I. When the alarm sounded, the staff went into well practised routines until I caught their attention and pointed to the plug. So, after about 15 seconds the ‘serious’ incident was resolved.
The midwife said, that because the heart rate had immediately flat lined they knew it was an equipment issue not a baby one.
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O/T (noted this below thanks to the account of Saul Staniforth for capturing this moment).
Andy Burnham was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday 27 September.
So I checked out the whole interview online.
Kuenssberg reminded him that “in July 2026 you said he would go as fast as you can in sorting out care for the elderly and vulnerable for England, Social Care. Where have you got to 3 months later” ?
Burnham’s response “We are making really good progress”.
Then Burnham started to speak about his Dad and also about when he was formerly an MP, where he mentioned that his Gran was going through the Care system and so as Health Secretary he remembered saying “We shouldn’t let what happened to my grandparent’s generation happen to my parent’s generation”.
He said “It’s devastating to be here and it has happened , parliament just ignoring this issue cause they consider it too difficult. Is there any wonder that politics is in such low esteem with the public when it can’t fix something as basic as the Care we give to each other”.
“So it can’t carry on, somebody needs to grasp the nettle“.
“I will be the one to do that”.
Great , so he is reaffirming that he will “do politics differently” and also confirming that he is going to act “grasp the nettle” on Care (in England), as he will “fix something as basic as Care in England“.
So that sounds as if he has a plan already and so he and his government are ready to proceed asap with that Social Care plan for England.
However Saul Staniforth in his X account showed the part of the interview with Kuenssberg where Burnham had said that he was:
“Not going to do politics as usual as prime minister” and that “Politics has let people down, backed away from difficult issues,” and that “I am not going to do this.”
Staniforth then showed this post on X by Beth Rigby Sky News:
“Andy Burnham has suggested he could delay his free national care service well into the 2030s to avoid having to raise taxes to fund it”.
I mean Burnham’s words , his conference speech and his overall rhetoric has been receiving many plaudits by many people.
Yet now it seems that Burnham’s promises, just like Keir Starmer’s, soon begin to either fall away or just never materialise.
Talk is cheap , it’s action that people need to see.
So when a new PM says he will “do politics differently” and so pledge to take on issues, like Social Care in England, that others before him have ignored as they were considered as too “difficult” , but then later he announces that he intends to kick the can (of Social Care reforms further) down the road .
Well why ?
Is it because for him and his government it is indeed too “difficult an issue to tackle and so then resolve (fix) “?
But then last Sunday he suggested to Kuenssberg that as an issue it, Social Care, was not “difficult” but it was fixable as it was something that was a basic issue.
So how then can he and his party now expect people to still trust him and so then still retain any “hope” of “change” on , not just Social Care in England, but also on all of the other pledges that he has made as the new PM ?
See Burnham is actually turning out to be just like a Continuity Starmer , the only difference being that he, Burnham, is being promoted as being an ‘ordinary lad from the North who has done well for himself’, he’s one of us, one of the working class.
However that then does not make him automatically more suitable and so then more able to do the job , compared to those whom we have all had to suffer before, what with all of the previous rubbish PM’s that we have had in the UK State, does it ?
The end for him will , I think, end in a similar way as it did for some of his predecessors in that job as the UK PM, so either he will jump or he will be pushed (out).
Liz S
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