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 encourage research in maternity care.

The Department of Health and Social Care, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funds a range of research in maternal and neonatal health focussing on the safety of maternity and neonatal services, and the national maternity ambition to halve maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths and brain injury by 2025.

The NIHR are currently commissioning research for the development of a patient-reported experience measure for use with women who experience maternity and neonatal services in the United Kingdom. This will provide timely, robust, feedback from users of maternity and neonatal services, to understand how users experience their service. The NIHR Policy Research Programme also fund a Policy Research Unit dedicated to Maternal & Neonatal Health & Care research based at the University of Oxford.

Additionally, the NIHR support the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth group who have undertaken a number of reviews on alternative methods of maternity and post-natal care. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including alternative methods of maternity and early post-natal care.