Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many serious incident investigations have been undertaken by the NHS into incidents involving stillbirths in each year since 2010.

It is the responsibility of care providers to investigate all serious incidents that take place under their jurisdiction.

Data was extracted from the Strategic Executive Information System (STEIS)* and the table below shows that a total of 955 serious incidents involving still births were reported in England since 2010. Of these 829 are recorded as ‘closed’ following the conclusion of an investigation.

*STEIS includes two categories ‘Maternity Services - Intrapartum death’, which encompass stillbirth that appeared to have occurred intrapartum (i.e. during labour) and ‘Maternity Services - Intrauterine death’, which describes death in the womb detected before labour commenced. Extracted data describes the numbers of serious incidents reported under these categories.