Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the UK's maternal mortality rate.

Maternal mortality rates in the United Kingdom are falling, from 13.95 deaths per 100,000 women giving birth in 2003–05 to 10.12 in 2010-12. Internationally, UK maternal mortality rates are similar to France and Germany, but still higher than in Norway, Spain and Sweden.

A range of actions have been taken to help improve outcomes for both women and babies. The Department aims to ensure that women receive the highest quality maternity care by focusing on improving health outcomes and women’s experience of care, and giving women greater choice over childbirth.

To support the National Health Service in improving outcomes in pregnancy, labour and immediately after birth, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has developed quality standards on antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care designed to drive up standards and measure priority quality improvements. The standards are derived from the best available evidence and are central to improved care focussing on delivering the best possible outcomes.

It is the responsibility of NHS organisations to ensure high quality care and choice for women in pregnancy and during childbirth. Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning maternity services locally. To assist with the commissioning of safe maternity services that reflect the needs and preferences of local maternity users, NHS England has developed a maternity commissioning resource pack for clinical commissioning groups which is currently being updated.

The UK has the most robust data in the world and a long established programme to review maternal deaths, which widely disseminates its findings and recommendations to help reduce the number of such deaths in the future. Since the programme was established in the early 1950s, there has been a 90% reduction in maternal deaths due to direct obstetric complications.

In addition, we now have over 2,000 more midwives and over 4,000 more health visitors since 2010.