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 reach stillbirth and mortality rates 2025 targets.

The Government Maternity Safety Ambition is to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries in babies occurring during or soon after birth by 2025. The ambition also includes reducing the rate of pre-term births from 8% to 6% by 2025.

We have added £165 million of recurring investment to the annual maternity budget, beginning in 2021, to grow and support the maternity workforce and improve neonatal care.

On 30 March 2023, NHS England published its ‘Three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services’. The delivery plan will make maternity and neonatal care safer, more personalised and more equitable for women, babies and families.

The NHS Long Term Plan includes new measures to improve safety, quality and continuity of care that will help achieve our ambition to halve stillbirths, maternal and neonatal deaths and brain injuries in babies by 2025. These measures include: ensuring most women can benefit from continuity of carer through and beyond their pregnancy, targeted towards those who will benefit most; providing extra support for expectant mothers at risk of premature birth; and expanding support for perinatal mental health conditions.

The expanded Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle, currently being rolled out across England, includes a new element to reduce the number of pre-term births and optimise care when pre-term delivery cannot be prevented.