Baby Loss and Safe Staffing in Maternity Care

Debate between Caroline Johnson and Bell Ribeiro-Addy

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

First, I thank all the Members who have taken the time to attend the debate and those who have spoken so openly about their own, and their constituents’, experiences and concerns. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) for securing the debate and enabling us to have this important conversation.

Let me take this opportunity to recognise the work of everyone who has been involved in Baby Loss Awareness Week. It is important that we make it easier to speak about pregnancy loss and enable people to have open conversations about their experiences, which in turn can help those who have experienced the tragic loss of a baby. I also take this opportunity to commend the work of the charities that provide excellent support to families experiencing baby loss, including all the members of the Baby Loss Awareness Alliance and the Lily Mae Foundation, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti).

As we take time to reflect, I want to acknowledge how difficult the loss of a baby is. Everyone’s grief will be different. It is a personal, individual process, which people will try to navigate in many different ways. Although it can be challenging to reflect on such tragic losses, this week provides an opportunity for people to remember, reflect, share and seek support and comfort from other people.

This is the seventh year in a row that a debate has been held to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week. I am honoured to take part as the new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care and to work with everyone to continue making a difference in an area as vital as maternity and neonatal safety.

The independent review into maternity and neonatal services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, as mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), was published last Wednesday. I take this opportunity to extend my condolences to the families who suffered due to the care they received and express my gratitude to the individuals who were instrumental in establishing the review and to the inquiry team for carrying out the review to such a high standard. The Government and I take the findings and recommendations of that report extremely seriously, and I am committed to preventing families from experiencing the same pain in the future.

Our maternity safety ambition, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool, is to achieve half the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths, and brain injuries in babies occurring soon after birth. Since 2010, the rate of stillbirths has reduced by 19.3%, the rate of neonatal mortality for babies born over 24 weeks gestational age has reduced by 36% and maternal mortality has reduced by 17%. However, it is important to note that there was an increase in the rate of stillbirths between 2020 and 2021. This increase occurred at the same time as the covid pandemic, and detailed work is going on to establish why that was the case. I reassure hon. Members that we remain committed to our maternity safety ambition.

Every woman giving birth has the right to a safe birth, and the Government and NHS England are committed to providing women with personalised and individual maternity care. The role of NHS staff in maternity services is critical to safe care for families, and I recognise all the great, hard work by teams across the country and thank them for it.

Members on both sides of the Chamber have talked about funding and workforce. NHS England has invested £127 million in bolstering the maternity workforce even further and in programmes to strengthen leadership and retention and provide capital for neonatal maternity care. We will keep that funding under review. That investment is on top of the £95 million investment made last year in the establishment of 1,200 more midwifery posts and 100 more consultant obstetrician posts. There are increasing numbers of midwifery and obs and gynae trainees.

I am grateful to the APPGs on maternity and on baby loss for producing their report into the maternity workforce, and I acknowledge the important themes in it. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) raised the issue of retention. NHS England has established a nursing and midwifery retention programme, supporting organisations to assess themselves against a bundle of interventions aligned to the NHS people promise and it will use the outcomes to develop high-quality local retention improvement plans. In addition, in 2022-23 we made £50,000 available for each maternity unit in England to enhance retention and pastoral support activities.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dr Johnson]

I will not, because I have a lot of questions to get through in a really short time.

Many hon. Members talked about bereavement. In the difficult scenario of baby loss, we understand that bereavement care for women and families is critical. We continue to engage closely with the bereavement sector to assess what is needed to ensure that bereaved families and individuals receive the support that they need. This year we have provided £2.26 million of national funding to support trusts, expand the number of staff trained in bereavement care and directly support trusts to increase the number of days of specialist bereavement provision that families can access.

In the women’s health strategy, which hon. Members mentioned, published earlier this year, we discussed the introduction of pregnancy loss certificates for England. This will allow a non-statutory, voluntary scheme to enable parents who have experienced a pre-24 weeks pregnancy loss to record and receive a certificate to provide recognition of their baby’s potential life. The certificate will not be a legal document, but it will be an important acknowledgement of a life lost, and we hope that it will provide comfort and support by validating a loss.

We understand the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on mental health, especially for those affected by the loss of a baby, and we are committed to expanding and transforming our mental health services so that people can receive the support that they need when they need it.

As part of the NHS long-term plan, we are looking to improve the access to and quality of perinatal mental health care for mothers and their partners. Mental health services around England are being expanded to include new mental health hubs for new, expectant, or bereaved mothers. These will offer physical health checks and psychological therapy in one building.