Minister admits maternity care should have been improved ‘years ago’, as study finds good treatment is an exception

13 May 2024, 09:28 | Updated: 13 May 2024, 09:31

A government minister has admitted that maternity care improvements should have been made "years ago", as a report suggested that good treatment was the "exception".

Maria Caulfield told LBC's Nick Ferrari that the standard of maternity care "still isn't where we want it to be," as a parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma called for a national plan to improve treatment for pregnant women.

The report, whose findings are due to be revealed on Monday, found "poor care is all frequently tolerated as normal, and women are treated as an inconvenience".

Ms Caulfield, the minister for women's health strategy and mental health, said that "for decades, [the experiences of] women going through pregnancy and labour have just been treated as 'this is something that naturally happened and there's no intervention required.'

But she said that the government has already made changes to the NHS in England to improve maternity care. Health is devolved in the UK, so Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have their own health services.

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Ms Caulfield told Nick: "We're already rolling out perinatal pelvic health services to identify women who are at high risk of birth trauma, during their pregnancy, not waiting till they go into the delivery room.

"We're also looking at women who've got high risk from other medical complications, such as diabetes or sickle cell. That's now available in every part of England, so that women are better looked after.

"And so this should have been done years ago, but we are actually putting in those building blocks now."

Ms Caulfield claimed that "no other government" had put in the same level of investment into maternity services.

She added: "We've increased the number of midwives by over 21%, we're seeing a reduction in neonatal deaths, we're seeing a reduction in stillbirths because of the measures that we're putting in place...

"We can reduce the amount of birth trauma by 20% by the measures that we're putting in. No other parts of the United Kingdom is putting these measures in and you know, we recognise that the standard isn't where he want it to be."

The stillbirth rate increased in England and Wales in 2021 for the first time in seven years, which some experts said could be attributable to reduced services during the pandemic.

It decreased again in 2022, the latest figures available, although this was still higher than pre-Covid levels.

The all-party inquiry into birth trauma was led by Conservative MP Theo Clarke and Labour MP Rosie Duffield.

Among its recommendations is the creation of a maternity commissioner reporting to the Prime Minister.

Ms Clarke, who pushed for the inquiry after revealing in Parliament that she felt she was going to die after giving birth in 2022, told The Times: "We have listened to mums carefully and applaud their bravery in coming forward, sometimes with horrific testimony of how the system failed them and the mental, physical and economic cost of that failure.

"The raft of recommendations we make, especially the appointment of a maternity commissioner, are all designed to end the postcode lottery on maternity services."

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the experiences of more than 1,300 women who have evidence to the inquiry were "simply not good enough".

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said she was "determined to improve the quality and consistency of care for women throughout pregnancy, birth and the critical months that follow".

In January, she shared her personal experience of the "darker corners" of the NHS after giving birth as a patient with type one diabetes.

"I want to reform our NHS and care system to make it faster, simpler and fairer for all of us and that includes women," she said.