Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the conduct of maternity investigations into term intrapartum stillbirths will continue to be the responsibility of the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch for the next three years.

We have not set a definitive timescale for the duration of the maternity investigations. As we said in our response to the Joint Committee’s report ‘Draft Health Service Safety Investigations Bill: A new capability for investigation patient safety incidents’, the Department’s view is that the best approach is to allow the current maternity investigations programme to complete its rollout to all healthcare regions in England, which is now complete and will continue for a limited period so that the learning and benefit can be gained from these investigations.