Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services

Michelle Welsh Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for not only the content but the tone of his response, and for the approach that he has taken. I firmly welcome this collaborative approach, because he rightly points out that this is an area that we should work across parties and across this whole House to address. His summary of the key issues that we must address through the work that we are doing—first and foremost, ensuring that women are listened to; the cultural changes we need to see; and the delivery test, recognising that this is a chain of failure—was very well made and in line with where I and the Department are coming at this issue from.

As I mentioned earlier, all the recommendations from today’s report, as well as the recommendations from the national report that Baroness Amos has been working on and from other inquiries and reviews of maternity service failures, will come to the national taskforce that I chair, precisely to deliver that delivery plan—that comprehensive plan of action. We will ensure that it is published by the end of this year, and the Government, working with the Opposition, will ensure that it is delivered across this country.

[Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. For openness and transparency, I note that I have been campaigning on this for six years and I am a harmed mother at Nottingham University hospitals NHS trust. I start by thanking the brave families—my friends—and Donna Ockenden and her team. What has happened is horrific: bullying, cover-ups, racism, discrimination and appalling practice. The way babies have been treated at birth and then at the end of their life is a national disgrace.

One of the most uncomfortable truths in this report is that it was not a regulator, a policy, a protocol, a law or a Government Department that brought us this inquiry; it was families—bereaved families, harmed families—having to speak again and again about their most horrendous and traumatic experience for more than a decade. That does not signify a system that is working. The report identified avoidable deaths, harm and profound failings. The publication of this report is simply not enough. What is required now is action, accountability and change. Can the Secretary of State therefore assure the House that there will be a plan with robust oversight and questioning of regulators and senior staff? Will he work with Nottinghamshire families and Nottinghamshire MPs to ensure that justice is truly and fully delivered?

[James Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend for her questions. Let me put on record again how much I have appreciated her advocacy, her support, her sharing of her own experience and her standing up for the many hundreds of families in the area she represents. Her contribution is invaluable to this most important work that we are doing as a Government. She talked about families driving this report and making sure that it happened, and she is absolutely right. I met some of those families last week in Nottingham, and as well as feeling numb at the depth and breadth of their pain, the feeling I left with was a sense of their exhaustion at having fought for so long to be listened to and to get this into the open. Our responsibility as a Government and as MPs is to say that, now it is out in the open for us all to see, we all bear a responsibility to help them carry this forward. I take that responsibility with the utmost seriousness.

My hon. Friend asked about a plan to change maternity services in Nottingham and across the country. There will be specific local recommendations in Nottingham, and I am meeting the chief executive of the trust next week to pick that up directly with him, but there are more recommendations in the report that will have national implications, along with the recommendations from the national review that is under way. It is crucial that all those recommendations are formed into a plan of action, and the taskforce that I chair will be crucial in making sure that these recommendations do not just get accepted and then sit on a shelf gathering dust, but form a plan of action that we can stand behind as a Government.

Finally, my hon. Friend mentioned the importance of action, accountability and change. I repeat what I said in my statement: one of the phrases that stuck with me powerfully from my meeting with Nottingham families last week was from the person who said that “accountability drives action”. Without that accountability, we cannot have a guarantee of action. That is why the accountability that the families seek is the change that we as a Government must seek to deliver.