Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the outcomes arising from the 2020 final progress report of the Each Baby Counts programme run by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

No specific assessment has been made of the outcomes arising from the 2020 final progress report of the Each Baby Counts programme. However, we have taken the findings of the report into consideration when shaping our future ambitions.

In March 2023, NHS England published the Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services. The plan sets out how NHS England will make maternity and neonatal care safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women, babies, and families. A copy of the plan is attached.

The plan is underpinned by four key themes. Theme 3 focuses on developing and sustaining a culture of safety, learning, and support. Each Baby Counts frameworks are referenced as a basis to support the development of a positive safety culture.

The Government has also set a National Maternity Safety Ambition to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 2025, alongside a further ambition to reduce the rate of pre-term births from 8% to 6% by 2025.

To support this ambition, we have provided £5 million to the ‘avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth’ collaboration in 2021/22 to build consensus on a new approach for improved identification, escalation and action on foetal deterioration in labour and a new protocol for complications that can arise with positioning of the baby at caesarean section.

We are currently developing a pilot programme to develop and test a delivery model for training of the trainers and for site level training.