Maternity Commissioner

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to Members for bobbing to indicate they would like to take part in the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on opening this important debate. I want to reflect the strength of feeling on this issue among my constituents in Esher and Walton; the fact that 568 people from my constituency added their names to this petition reflects a very real and deeply felt concern among families in my community about the state of maternity care in this country.

I am a mother of four, and I am very lucky to have given birth four times, but three of those were traumatic. My first birth was an emergency C-section, the second was a vaginal birth after caesarean that needed lots of intervention and the third was absolutely fine, but during my fourth the crash team had to attend because the midwife failed to pay attention to what I knew, as an experienced mother, was a problem. When I took baby Tom, who is now 14, home—[Interruption.]

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)]

Order. It might be helpful to know that some Members have approached me to say they have spoken to Mr Speaker, as they may need to move around. They will ask to intervene if they want a Member to give way, and Members can give way if they are specifically asked.

[Monica Harding]

Thank you for that clarification, Sir Alec. I am trying to do my best on protocol.

When I took baby Tom, who is now 14 years old, home, hugging him ever more tightly, I told only my very close friends and family what had happened. I fear that the stats we see are only the tip of the iceberg, because many are not shared.

Behind all the signatures are stories—of women who feel they were not listened to, of traumatic births and, in some cases, of long-term psychological impacts. There are testimonies in my inbox. One constituent, Lisa—a paediatric nurse with nearly two decades of experience in the NHS—wrote to me after developing PTSD following a traumatic birth. She spoke not only as a mother, but as a healthcare professional who understands the system from the inside yet still feels let down by it. Another constituent, Rosie, who has worked for over 20 years supporting women through pregnancy and childbirth, described a system where too many women feel they must fight to have their voices heard, where decisions are not always fully respected and where trauma is becoming far too common.

Sadly, those are not isolated accounts; they are consistent with what we see in the national data and across the many reviews that have been conducted. One in three women now describes their childbirth experiences as traumatic. PTSD affects about one in 20 mothers. Maternal mortality has risen over the past 15 years, and the CQC has found that a majority of maternity units require improvement or are rated inadequate for safety.

We should be clear: the problem is not a lack of understanding of what is going wrong. Over 700 recommendations have been made across more than a dozen reviews of maternity services. They point again and again to the same issues of training time, poor communication, failures to listen to women, and systems that do not learn effectively.

All the while, workforce pressures are intensifying. At the end of 2025, the Nursing and Midwifery Council found that growth in the nursing and midwifery register had slowed sharply, driven by a nearly 50% drop in international recruitment. That risks putting further strain on maternity services that are already struggling with staffing and retention.

Further behind the headlines on staffing numbers, there is a quieter crisis in the day-to-day reality of the job. A constituent who works as a midwife told me that her colleagues work 12-hour shifts without proper breaks, often not stopping until 5 pm after starting at 7.15 am. They are expected to juggle the workload of two people, stay behind beyond their hours and move between demanding day and night shifts with little flexibility. At the same time, they are navigating constantly changing guidance, a heavy administrative burden and a culture where, too often, the fear is that if something goes wrong, the blame will fall on them. It is a toxic combination of pressure, exhaustion and anxiety, which is totally unsustainable and is driving people out of the profession.

The question is not whether there is a problem, but whether we are prepared to act on what we already know. That is why I support the call for a maternity commissioner, who would provide national leadership, accountability and, crucially, oversight of the implementation of the many outstanding recommendations. Without clear ownership, it is all too easy for reports to be published, welcomed and then quietly set aside. Many of the constituents who have written to me are healthcare professionals themselves. They speak of a system under intense pressure, of understaffing and burnout and of not having the time or resources to deliver the level of care they know that patients deserve. If we want to support those staff, we must fix the system in which they are working.

That is why the Liberal Democrats have set out a maternity rescue package to make Britain the safest place in the world to have a baby. It includes appointing a maternity commissioner, and would ensure that we had a 24/7 consultant presence on maternity units and one-to-one midwifery care during labour. It would invest in the workforce, including hundreds more midwives, restore funding for vital services and guarantee access to perinatal mental health support. It would address the unacceptable disparities that persist in maternal outcomes, with black women three to four times more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly after birth than white women. And it would ensure that when things do go wrong, families are treated with compassion, transparency and proper support.

While the Amos review is important and should be welcomed, it is the 14th major review of maternity services. We need delivery. The families in my constituency who signed the petition are asking not for more reports, but for change. They are asking for a system where they feel safe, listened to and cared for at one of the most important moments of their life. No birth is easy; it is a major, demanding, intense and very painful process, but in 2026, in the fifth largest economy in the world, it should not be dangerous, and it should be equitable.