Maternity Services: Negligence
(asked on 5th February 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department spent on maternity negligence compensation in (a) 2024, (b) 2023, (c) 2022, (d) 2021 and (e) 2020.
NHS Resolution (NHSR) manages clinical negligence and other claims against the National Health Service in England. NHSR reports costs in financial years, rather than calendar years. The following table shows the total payments for clinical negligence claims, where the specialty is obstetrics, as well as a breakdown of the payments, from 2019/20 and 2023/24:
Financial year | Payment for damages | NHS legal costs | Payments for claimant legal costs | Total payments |
2019/20 | £767,233,238 | £32,367,023 | £102,738,093 | £902,338,354 |
2020/21 | £723,593,887 | £33,116,641 | £91,491,019 | £848,201,547 |
2021/22 | £773,202,407 | £31,805,729 | £100,760,613 | £905,768,748 |
2022/23 | £949,118,455 | £35,813,142 | £100,158,967 | £1,085,090,563 |
2023/24 | £988,485,434 | £37,850,663 | £117,435,753 | £1,143,771,850 |
Total | £4,201,633,420 | £170,953,198 | £512,584,445 | £4,885,171,063 |
The total payments made by NHSR for clinical negligence claims in 2023/24 was £2.8 billion. This is approximately 1.6% of the NHS resource budget. There is no fixed budget for maternity claims specifically, as the financial management of clinical negligence payments depends only on the financial amount and not the claim type.