Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Women’s Health Strategy, page 68, what targets his Department has established to help achieve the target of the NHS being the best place in the world to give birth.

The Government’s national maternity safety ambition aims to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries in babies occurring during or soon after birth, by 2025. The ambition also includes reducing the rate of pre-term births from 8% to 6%.

Since 2010, the rate of stillbirths has reduced by 19.3%, the rate of neonatal mortality for babies born over 24 weeks gestational age of viability has reduced by 36% and the proportion of babies born preterm has reduced from 8% in 2017 to 7.5% in 2020. The overall rate of brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth has fallen to 4.2 per 1,000 births in 2019, 2% lower than in 2010 and we have launched a Brain Injury Reduction Programme. NHS England is developing a single delivery plan for maternity, which will be delivered nationally through the Maternity Transformation Programme.