Health: Midwives

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am very interested to hear what the noble Earl says about the Australian experience. The mandate that the Government issued to NHS England, published in November 2012, states that women should receive better care during pregnancy and have a named midwife responsible for ensuring personalised, one-to-one care throughout pregnancy and childbirth, as well as postnatally. As part of that, we want NHS England to work with partner organisations to ensure that women are able to make informed and safe choices about where to have their baby. However, it is probably too soon to commit to a ratio of one midwife to one expectant mother.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure we all support the position of the midwives, but I would like to bring up the financial aspect again. Last week, we had a debate on how people would manage to finance their care in care homes and I mentioned that there are many difficulties, including the fact that no one will now give bridging finance for anything. I understand that all the midwives are asking for is contingency support to enable them eventually to run this as an independent scheme. They simply need the finance to get it off the ground. If that is the case, I remind the Minister of all the difficulties involved in raising funding for anything.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, any bridging loan requires to be repaid, and that is one of the issues that we are looking at.