Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of (a) the implications for his policies of the time taken by East Kent University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to share with the Care Quality Commission the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists report on maternity services in that trust and (b) the effectiveness of overall NHS clinical governance in relation to maternity services.

In 2015 the Trust informed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that they had commissioned a review of their maternity services. They also shared information about the actions being taken forward in response to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ findings prior to the CQC’s September 2016 inspection and after that inspection as part of their improvement plan. However, the CQC’s records do not indicate that the CQC received the full report before January 2019.

The CQC undertook a further unannounced inspection of maternity services at East Kent in late January 2020 and early February 2020 to follow up on its previous inspections and monitoring of the Trust and the actions the Trust is taking to improve the safety of its maternity services. The CQC will publish its report in due course, in line with its normal publication timelines. NHS England and NHS Improvement are providing support to improve the Trust’s clinical governance for maternity services.

NHS England and NHS Improvement and the CQC have been closely monitoring maternity services at the Trust.