Ockenden Review

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question; he is absolutely right, of course. The findings will be put in place, and in many trusts they already are. I was just looking for my data on the Morecambe Bay investigation, which I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) also commissioned. If we look at the Morecambe Bay trust investigation, the predecessor to this, it is quite commonplace to say—I hear it all the time—“Well, we had Morecambe Bay and nothing has happened: the recommendations haven’t been implemented there.”

Actually, the Morecambe Bay investigation made 44 recommendations, 18 of which have been completed within the Morecambe Bay trust. There were 26 wider NHS learnings and recommendations, of which 14 were accepted nationally and 11 are being worked on now in the Department, to be rolled out nationally. I use that as evidence that reports such as this have consequences: actions that are implemented and make a difference in maternity units.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]]

I add my sympathy and condolences to all those who have suffered loss or damage to their baby or mother in childbirth under the care of the trust, and I also add my voice to thank Donna Ockenden and her large team for the important work that they have done to review so many cases over the past two decades and more. I hope this will help each and every family who have suffered to reach a better understanding of the tragedy of their own case. However, the principal motivation of my then constituents, the Stanton-Davies parents, in coming forward following the loss of their baby daughter Kate, which prompted this review, was to ensure that other parents could be spared the trauma that they went through.

I am grateful to the Minister for her response to this report. In addition to what she has already said, can she tell the House, and the thousands of expectant mums whose babies are delivered by the committed clinicians at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust every year, about the improvements in safety and standards that prevail now in the women’s and children’s unit? That might reassure them that some lessons have already been learned, that more will continue to be learned on the back of this review in implementing its recommendations, and that the maternity service in Shropshire and Telford provides a safe place for babies to be born.

[Ms Dorries]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. As he is aware, I have visited the trust. We have a chief executive in place now who I personally, and the Department and NHS England, have been working closely with, as well as with the team in the hospital. The trust has accepted the findings of the report and will take each of the recommendations forward, so that we learn from these tragic cases of the past and can give patients the safe and high-quality care that they deserve. My right hon. Friend was a Minister himself, I think possibly in my role, in the Department when this report was commissioned, so he has been involved with it right from the beginning.

We want the NHS to be the safest place in the world to give birth—I know I say that often at the Dispatch Box—and this report makes a valuable and important contribution towards that goal. That starts in Shrewsbury and Telford, where as I stand here now the recommendations are being discussed within the trust, and ways found both to deliver and to implement the recommendations that have been made, so that from today onwards Shrewsbury and Telford will be a safe place—as it has been for some time, while it has been on our radar and in special measures—for women to give birth.