Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to reduce the occurrence of post-natal illness.

The Department is committed to improving maternity outcomes and experience of care for women and babies.

In November 2015, my Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced a national ambition to halve the rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 2030. Action includes tackling issues of culture, leadership and learning, to improve safety in maternity units as well as the outcomes and experience of care for mothers and babies.

The Our Chance campaign promotes advice about healthy pregnancy, highlighting the crucial risk factors during pregnancy and the postnatal period which may lead to adverse outcomes for mother and baby. In addition, the Avoiding Term Admission in Neonatal Units programme seeks to prevent the separation of mother and baby (except in cases with a compelling medical reason) and avoid admissions of full-term babies to neonatal units.

The Department has invested £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.