Maternity Services

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this debate. Fundamentally, it is about giving kids the best start in life and giving mums the best care. There are few subjects of more importance to us, right across the House.

The evidence is clear that midwife-led maternity units are great for babies and mums. They are every bit as safe as the big hospitals we have heard many hon. Members talk about today, and one of the benefits they offer is the option of a more natural birth, with less intervention from health professionals, unless it is necessary. Mums who deliver in a midwife-led unit are less likely to need a caesarean or help from forceps or a vacuum. While those procedures can be life-saving, and we should thank the people who use them every day to support babies into this world, they come with downsides. Caesareans increase the risk for mums, including haemorrhage, blood clots and infections in the womb, and they take much longer to recover from. The potential side effects of forceps and vacuums are less severe but are, nonetheless, very real.

As the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) said, choice is important for mums. So that people can have the birth they want, we should make sure that, when they come to the end of their pregnancy, they can choose where they want to deliver—be that at home, in a more clinical setting if there are additional risks, or in a midwife-led unit.

In Lichfield, we were lucky enough to have a fantastic midwife-led maternity unit at Samuel Johnson community hospital. The unit was closed during the pandemic for reasons we all understand, given the national crisis, but it has never reopened. The closest maternity unit is at Queen’s hospital in Burton, 11 miles up the A38. When High Speed 2 is not destroying the transport infrastructure in my constituency, that is not necessarily a significant trip in an ambulance, but it presents barriers to those who do not have access to their own transport. It is currently the only option available to people in Lichfield.

However, mums in Lichfield will soon not be able to choose that midwife-led unit because it is on the chopping block. That would be a huge loss. The service gives women in Lichfield, Burntwood and the surrounding villages somewhere close to home to deliver in a calmer, quieter setting than the big hospital. Where that is appropriate, I think everybody in this room, and people much more widely, would want to support it.

Shutting the midwife-led unit would mean less choice for mums, and potentially worse outcomes for mums and babies. I have met many people whose children were born in that unit and who are so happy to have had the option. When I mentioned that I was taking part in this debate, one of my staff members said, without prompting, that she had had four kids—two in the clinical setting of a big hospital, and two at the Samuel Johnson community hospital. She was so much happier with her experience in the midwife-led unit. She was not, in any way, talking down what happened in the other hospital, but the more natural, quieter and more relaxed environment was a benefit as she was going through childbirth.

I thank everybody who works in maternity services, and I particularly thank those who champion midwife-led units.