Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timescale is for rolling out the maternal morbidity indicator.

The Department recognises the importance of monitoring near-misses and severe maternal morbidity, and continues to consider how a maternal morbidity indicator can be implemented. No timescales for a national rollout of the indicator have been set.

NHS England has developed 14 Maternal Medicine Networks (MMN) across England to ensure that all women with chronic and acute medical problems around pregnancy, for instance diabetes or heart disease, have access to specialist management and care from physicians and obstetrics, tackling the biggest contributors to maternal mortality. The Department is in the process of commissioning the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Policy Research Unit for Maternal and Neonatal Health, to undertake research into developing an MMN-specific maternal morbidity outcome indicator, and provide the prevalence of current morbidity as a baseline for ongoing monitoring.