Health: Midwives

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness raises another important point. This will be a particular issue for the local education and training boards, which we are setting up under the auspices of Health Education England, to get a local feel for the needs of patients in an area. The language skills of midwives will be a very important ingredient of that.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, in the light of the original Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, would the Minister advise the House as to whether NICE will be asked to produce guidelines based on what it believes is needed or based on the current shortfall in midwives? If it is based on the current shortfall, we will suffer the same problems.

[Earl Howe]

As I mentioned, we are doing our best to address the shortfall in the number of midwives in training. However, NICE has been asked to produce a quality standard that will be a benchmark against which the quality and outcomes of midwifery practice can be judged.