Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) monitor and (b) reduce (i) socio-economic and (ii) ethnic disparities in the rates of (A) neonatal death, (B) brain injury and (C) pre-term birth.

The Government is committed to ensuring that all women and babies received safe, personalised, equitable, and compassionate care. I am urgently considering the immediate action needed across maternity and neonatal services to improve outcomes and address the stark inequalities that persist for women and babies across ethnicity and deprivation, including what targets are needed. This includes consideration of what comes beyond the national maternity safety ambition, ensuring that we take an evidence-based approach, and that any targets set are women and baby-centred and focused on tackling inequalities.

There has been some good progress to date. As part of NHS England’s three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, all trusts are rolling out version three of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle, which provides maternity units with guidance and interventions to reduce stillbirths, neonatal brain injury, neonatal death, and preterm birth, and includes initiatives to reduce inequalities. All Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems have published Equity and Equality actions plans to tackle inequalities for women and babies from ethnic minorities and those living in the most deprived areas.

The Government is currently piloting a training programme to help avoid brain injury in childbirth, and to address variation and improve safety for mothers and their babies. If successful, national rollout is expected to commence next year.

The Department’s officials work closely with NHS England and maternity and neonatal sector partners to monitor inequalities in perinatal outcomes by ethnicity and deprivation, including through the published Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK reports.