Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure safe, sustainable staffing levels across maternity services; and what steps he is taking to ensure families affected by baby loss are offered adequate and specialised bereavement support.

The Department is committed to expanding midwifery training places by 3,650 over a four year period. Increases of 626 in 2019/20 and 1,140 in 2020/21 were achieved, and as of January 2023, the student data collection is showing an increase of 1271 in 2021/22. An additional £127 million was also invested in 2022 to go into the maternity system to help increase the National Health Service maternity workforce and improve neonatal care.

The Government funded the Stillbirths and Neonatal Death charity to work with other baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to produce and support the roll-out of a National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP). The pathway covers a range of circumstances of a baby loss including miscarriage, stillbirth, termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, neonatal death and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. As of 1 January 2023, 108 NHS England trusts (84%) have committed to adopting the nine NBCP standards.