Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps in her Plan for Patients will focus on improving maternity services.

Existing commitments to improve maternity services remain in place, including the ambition is to reduce pre-term births and halve the 2010 rate of stillbirths, maternal and neonatal deaths and brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth by 2025. The maternity safety strategy introduced and funded initiatives such as the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle, Maternal Medicine Networks and Maternal Mental Health Hubs. The Maternity Transformation Programme is also implementing safer and more personalised care across England.

We have invested £127 million in the National Health Service maternity workforce and neonatal care to ensure safe staffing levels and that patients receive personalised midwifery care. This is in addition to £95 million for a further 1,200 midwifery and 100 consultant obstetrician posts. The Department is working with the NHS to establish an independent working group to help guide the implementation of the recommendations from the Ockenden report and the forthcoming East Kent report following publication. The first working group meeting took place on 31 August 2022 and will inform the new NHS Maternity Development Plan.