Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many meetings the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation team has held during its evidence gathering with a) frontline NHS maternity staff and b) staff representative organisations.

Baroness Amos launched a call for evidence for those who work in the maternity and neonatal pathway, which closed on 9 March. The Department understands the Independent National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation team has received more than 9,000 responses from across 124 trusts. A breakdown for responses by profession or clinical speciality is not yet available as evidence is still being analysed by the independent investigation team. This will be published in the final report. Information about how to access the workforce survey was distributed to all National Health Service trusts, and the investigation asked them to share the link to all maternity and neonatal staff groups, both clinical and non-clinical.

Evidence collection is still ongoing. When visiting the 12 local NHS trusts identified in the Terms of Reference, the investigation team conducted evidence panels with staff as well as reviewing maternity and neonatal facilities. Further evidence collection was conducted after the visits, including interviews with the senior executive team and one to one conversations offered to staff if they do not feel comfortable talking in a group. As of 26 February, the investigation had held 44 staff panels and completed 75 staff/executive interviews as part of the local reviews. The investigation is now in the process of undertaking interviews with national system leaders.