Maternity Commissioner

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for expertly introducing the debate, and the petitioners, Louise Thompson and Theo Clarke, who I was pleased to work with on the birth trauma inquiry, for their continued work on these issues.

As many hon. Members will know, maternity care is an issue of great importance to me. It is also of great importance to my constituents, as demonstrated by the hundreds who signed the petition. I wholeheartedly support the call for a maternity commissioner; as I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for black maternal health, I am sure that that will surprise no one.

This week is Black Maternal Health Week, so I will speak about the continuing racial disparities in maternity care and why a commissioner would work to address them. Each Black Maternal Health Week, I usually start by addressing the statistics around black maternal health, which make for grim listening. When Five X More, the secretariat of the APPG, was first founded, black women were five times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Now, the most recent MBRRACE-UK  report shows that black women are three times more likely to die at that time. Although awareness has made an impact, unfortunately that statistic is not necessarily because less black women are dying but because more of all women are experiencing that horrible situation. Black women are still twice as likely to experience stillbirth and baby death. Although the disparities remain unacceptable, I recognise the work that is being done by NHS trusts to identify some of the shortcomings and address racial bias. As Members know, it is not just the death rate where racial disparities exist.

Last year, Five X More conducted its second black maternity experiences report, a large-scale survey collecting the experiences of black women during their pregnancies and childbirth. Of the 1,000 respondents, 54% experienced challenges with healthcare professionals, 28% of women reported discrimination, mostly racial, and 49% stated that their experiences during labour and birth were not properly addressed. I cannot stress enough how deeply concerning it is that women are going through this intensely vulnerable experience and when they raise concerns they are being dismissed or ignored.

The survey also said that 23% of black women did not receive the pain relief they requested, and just one in five women had been informed of how to make a complaint, with only 8% going on to pursue a formal process. The report has many more harrowing findings and I encourage Members to read it.

I recognise the fact that action is being taken to address the overall crisis in our maternity care, and I welcome the Government’s national maternity and neonatal investigation, led by Baroness Amos, which I was pleased to feed into with the APPG for black maternal health. It is a much-needed investigation that I hope will provide some understanding as to why our maternity services are failing so many mothers and babies, as well as give clear recommendations to improve the state of maternity care.

As we have heard many times in this debate, however, it cannot just be another report where we wring our hands and recommendations are produced that are simply ignored. In this country, in 2026, we cannot keep reeling off these statistics in debates such as this one. It makes no sense that a country like ours should be experiencing these issues and that so many women and their babies should be dying.

Can the Minister specifically inform the Chamber whether a clear target to end the racial disparities in maternity care is expected to be included in the recommendations from the forthcoming report—something that appeared in our Labour party manifesto? Was the investigation tasked with offering advice on an attainable target, or will the Government develop a target based on the report’s findings and recommendations? During last year’s Black Maternal Health Week debate, the responding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), insisted that the Government were working towards setting an evidence-base target, but she was not forthcoming about when one would be announced. I hope the Minister will give some indication of that today.

The call for a maternity commissioner is about accountability. A dedicated maternity commissioner would, for the first time, create a single accountable authority, with the mandate, resource and institutional weight to confront the systemic failures driving the black maternal health crisis. Right now, we are seeing a situation where the responsibility is completely diffuse—a commissioner would change that. They could drive the implementation of the recommendations that have been sitting in reports for years; they could ensure that trusts are training staff to recognise and challenge racial bias in clinical settings. They would have a mandate to bring together disaggregated data collection, so that the disparities cannot be buried in averages.

This is about accountability, and about setting clear direction and focus. What I have realised over the years when challenging these issues, particularly in black maternal health, is that without a dedicated focus, black maternal health remains everyone’s concern and nobody’s priority. I have often said that addressing the racial disparities in maternity care will improve the state of maternity care for all women and babies. Establishing a maternity commissioner will make it someone’s job not just to monitor the problem but to actually fix it. We cannot continue to fail women in this way; it has to be somebody’s sole responsibility to fix this issue.