Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department taking to reduce the number of stillbirths.

It is the Government’s ambition to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 2025 and to achieve at least a 20% reduction in these rates by 2020.

The stillbirth rate in England fell from 5.1 to 4.1 per 1,000 births between 2010 and 2017, representing a decrease of almost 20% and 827 fewer stillbirths. We currently have the lowest stillbirth rate on record.

A 20% decrease in stillbirth rates was recorded by early adopters of the Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle. All maternity units are now implementing elements of the Care Bundle and there are plans to expand its scope to include other clinical interventions.

We are improving investigations into term stillbirths, early neonatal deaths and other adverse outcomes, with investigations being undertaken by the independent Healthcare Safety Investigations Branch, identifying what went wrong and capturing the lessons learned.

Alongside the Welsh and Scottish Health Departments, we have also funded the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool, launched in 2018. All trusts have now registered to use this tool.

Additionally, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice are working together to look into whether the law should be changed to expand coronial jurisdiction to stillbirths with the intention that this may help ensure that important lessons are learnt to prevent future deaths.