Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to (a) monitor the progress of and (b) evaluate maternity and neonatal safety improvement schemes.

Improving safety and outcomes for women and babies is central to NHS England’s Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, which is built on recommendations from recent maternity safety inquiries and specifically addresses the key themes raised in them.

The Plan includes determining success measures that will be used to monitor outcomes and progress in achieving key objectives on the plan. To facilitate monitoring against the key objectives, NHS England published technical guidance which includes information to provide clarity on the data sources and indicator construction for these measures.