Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Report of the Morecambe Bay Investigation by Dr Bill Kirkup, published in March 2015, what progress he has made in introducing a mechanism to independently scrutinise perinatal and maternal deaths.

Medical examiners have been introduced on a non-statutory basis from April 2019 to scrutinise all non-coronial deaths and ensure the right deaths are referred to coroners. This includes neonatal death.

Since April 2018, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch has been investigating all term intrapartum stillbirths (at least 37+0 completed weeks of gestation), neonatal deaths of all term babies born following labour when the baby died within the first week of life (0-6 days) of any cause and maternal deaths.

MBRRACE-UK (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the United Kingdom) conduct surveillance of all late fetal losses, stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and produce Confidential Enquires to provide valuable learning and inform service improvement.