The Health and Social Care Committee has reported that improvements in maternity services have been too slow, with safety lessons not being learned.

The Care Quality Commission’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals has reported evidence of a ‘defensive culture’, ‘dysfunctional teams’ and ‘safety lessons not learned’. Professor Ted Baker told the Commons inquiry that more than a third of CQC ratings for maternity services identified requirements to improve safety, larger than in any other specialty.

The report claims that almost two in five childbirth units still provide care that is unsafe to some extent, despite maternity care improving in recent years after a series of scandals.

MPs recommend urgent action to address staffing shortfalls in maternity services, with staffing numbers identified as the first and foremost essential building block in providing safe care.

Jeremy Hunt, chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, said: “Although the majority of NHS births are totally safe, failings in maternity services can have a devastating outcome for the families involved. Despite a number of high-profile incidents, improvements in maternity safety are still not happening quickly enough. Although the NHS deserves credit for reducing baby deaths and stillbirths significantly, around 1,000 more babies would live every year if our maternity services were as safe as Sweden.

“Our biggest concerns were around staffing and culture: staffing levels have now started to improve but we found a persisting ‘culture of blame’ when things go wrong which not only prevents people admitting that mistakes were made, but crucially, prevents anyone learning from them.

“Our independent expert panel gave an overall verdict of ‘requires improvement’ which sends a strong message that the Government and the NHS need to redouble their efforts ahead of the Ockenden report into Shrewsbury and Telford and the Kirkup report into East Kent. Nothing less is owed to the families for whom a birth was not the joyous occasion they had the right to expect.”

Gill Walton, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Our maternity services are among the safest in the world, and getting safer, and most women who use them will have safe, good quality care. However, too many women are let down by the NHS, and sometimes the results of this are terrible and tragic. We must have a system that is open, and that recognises, investigates, and learns when things go wrong, so that safety continually improves and so that families get the truth, redress, and support they so often have to fight for.  

“Midwives, maternity support workers and other maternity staff have been working incredibly hard, under extraordinary pressure for many, many years to deliver the safest and best possible care. They have been doing this within a system that often fails them by not giving them the staff, resources, and modern facilities they need to do their jobs as safely as possible. Midwives and maternity staff go to work each day to deliver a high standard of safe care, but often this is compromised by underinvestment, and lack of acknowledgement about the importance of leadership in midwifery. This in turn means that too many women, their babies, and their families, are not getting the service they should rightly expect and deserve. This is unacceptable for women and for the dedicated staff that strive to care for them.  

“There is investment going into maternity to increase staffing levels, provide more training and to improve resources. The working culture in maternity services is also improving and the RCM in partnership with the RCOG is also working hard together to improve this further. However, all this this is against a background of a decade or more of serious midwifery shortages and underfunding. These reports show that the government must step up and they must give our maternity services the staff and the money it needs, and they must do it quickly.”