Ockenden Review

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I completely take on board the noble Lord’s observations. It is true that Donna Ockenden’s report alludes to the failure by senior leadership to monitor and intervene where clearly there were problems. However, let us not confuse correlation with causation. This was not caused by a failure of senior leadership, but by a breakdown in the basic management systems and culture of the maternity services within the trust. That should have been addressed by the senior leadership, but it was not necessarily caused by them. I completely endorse the observation of the noble Lord that neighbouring trusts have an important role to play in checking in and benchmarking behaviours. That is a point made very clearly in the Ockenden report, and one that I hope they will step up to.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]]

I salute the courage of the parents of Kate Stanton Davies, Pippa Griffiths and so many others in their tenacious personal search for truth and justice. Donna Ockenden’s report was harrowing reading. The pain, trauma and inhuman disregard for the safety of baby and mother was palpable, profoundly damaging confidence and trust in maternity services. It made me relive my own decade-long failed attempt to seek information on whether my lengthy abandonment on a bed overnight after 48 hours of labour pain has anything to do with my now 42 year-old son’s brain damage and lifelong disabilities. I was dismissed constantly, admonished for “being an Asian mother too ashamed to have given birth to a disabled child”, which is far from the truth about a much-loved son.

Sadly, I was not alone, as the Ockenden report details. It has been repeatedly confirmed by so many others and by the first maternity advocacy scheme, which was set up in the 1980s to address the high postnatal mortality rate of mothers and babies among Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Somalian, Vietnamese and African women, whose maternity experiences, even today, remain inconsistent and patchy. Therefore, can I ask the Minister what consideration can and will be given to historic grievances in any future review of maternity services, given what the right honourable Jeremy Hunt in the other place, and Donna Ockenden, have said about the experience of mothers and babies highlighted being only the beginning of unearthing potential malpractice across England?

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

I join others in paying tribute to the personal testimony of the noble Baroness. The story that she tells is extremely moving. One cannot think about the challenges and difficulties that she must have had since that awful night, which she so movingly describes. The report makes it clear that those with a BAME background have disproportionately high rates of difficulty at birth and in maternity services, something which undoubtedly we need to look at more carefully. However, the Ockenden report is not a historic grievances report, and that will not be the focus of our response.