Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure hospital maternity services are able to offer home births.

While all trusts providing maternity services in England offer a home birth service, there is occasionally a need for a trust to suspend home births for operational reasons, such as temporary staff shortages.

In March 2022, NHS England announced that more than £50 million would be provided over the next two years to increase the number of staff in maternity and neonatal services. This is in addition to a further £95 million per year for recruitment and training.