Maternity Services
(asked on 10th February 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department has spent in each of the last 3 years on (a) maternity services and (b) compensation for errors in maternity services.
The following table shows the annual spend for providing maternity care for each of the last three years:
Year | Annual spend |
2022/23 | £4,722,376,594 |
2023/24 | £5,174,161,637 |
2024/25 | £5,790,365,917 |
Source Patient-Level Costing dataset, NHS National Cost Collection, NHS England
Note: data is not yet available for the financial year 2025/26.
NHS Resolution (NHSR) manages clinical negligence and other claims against the National Health Service in England. The following table shows the total payments for maternity, including obstetrics and neonatology, clinical negligence claims across all clinical schemes between 2022/23 and 2024/25, broken down by primary specialty and payment year:
Payment Year | Obstetrics (£) | Neonatology (£) | Total Maternity (£) |
2022/23 | 1,086,187,276 | 20,097,430 | 1,106,284,706 |
2023/24 | 1,145,173,134 | 30,185,739 | 1,175,358,873 |
2024/25 | 1,287,368,291 | 47,037,798 | 1,334,406,089 |
Source: NHSR.
Notes:
- the data includes the damages and NHS legal costs and claimant legal costs paid in each relevant financial year;
- payments include those raised against both claims that were closed or open at the end of each financial year; and
- data on “notified claims value” only includes an early estimate of eventual settlement value if all the claims were to settle with damages.