Ockenden Review

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for not only his work at Watford General Hospital—he is probably there more often some of the patients—but his commitment to mental health in his constituency. He has launched a programme of 1,000 mental health first aiders, which is a tremendous boost to his constituents. I am aware of his work, and I thank him for it.

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Midwifery leadership has been strengthened this year by the appointment of seven regional chief midwives, working with local maternity services to ensure the provision of safer and more personal care for women, babies and their families. I am sure that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) had the same thoughts that I did on reading the report. There is a lack of collegiate working—“Let’s not let the doctors have this. Let’s keep this for the midwives”—and a lack of team working. The recommendations in the report put forward solutions to end that culture and to introduce one where doctors, nurses and midwifery champions work together, as a team, with the mother, who is in control of and owns her birth plan, because that is what it should be about.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is devastating to read about the families involved in this. We have been here so many times. I think back to the publication of the Robert Francis report in 2013, which particularly talked about the duty of candour and the way that those issues are addressed. Clearly the system is quite passive; it is dependent on people raising concerns. What is the Minister doing to ensure that it is more interrogative of families and those involved in order to draw out people’s concerns at what is perhaps their most vulnerable time, as is the case for many women when giving birth?

[Ms Dorries]

The hon. Lady is right: there is a theme. Whether it is Paterson, the Cumberlege review or Morecambe Bay, central to all this is women, and so much of this report is familiar in that women are not listened to. The way some of those mothers were spoken to when they were delivering their babies or during the most tragic hours and days afterwards is just appalling. It is about women being downgraded almost, as though their complaints, their voices or their concerns, and the awful circumstances in which they find themselves are not worthy of the same consideration as patients in other hospitals in other situations.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We already have national guardians—they immediately spring to mind. We have 600 national guardians in hospitals. NHS workers wear lanyards and, when people want to highlight something that they have seen going wrong in terms of patient safety, they may speak to that person, who will assist them and raise their concerns. It is quite something when we need that, when patients need such assistance. It is also for staff to raise patient concerns. She is absolutely right—it is about listening and treating the complaints and issues of women seriously.