Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on implementing the recommendations of the report Reading the Signals: Maternity and Neonatal Services in East Kent since its publication.

Following publication of Dr Bill Kirkup’s report, Reading the Signals: Maternity and Neonatal Services in East Kent, Dr Kirkup was appointed by the Department to develop concrete actions to implement the report’s recommendations. In this work, Dr Kirkup concluded that a national maternity plan was needed to oversee improvements in maternity and neonatal care.

The National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, led by Baroness Amos, will also help us understand the systemic issues behind why so many women, babies, and families experience unacceptable care. The investigation is bringing together the findings from past reviews, including East Kent, from local investigations of maternity and neonatal services in selected trusts, and evidence from families and staff into one clear national set of recommendations.

The National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce will address the investigation’s final recommendations, tackling the recurrent systemic issues identified in the interim report, and will hold the system to account for improving outcomes and experiences for women, babies, and families, and staff experiences.

One of the recommendations of the East Kent report was to introduce a Maternity Outcomes Signal System (MOSS), which was launched in November 2025. The system is now being used by maternity services across England. MOSS monitors outcomes in near-real time to identify potential declines in the safety of maternity services, prompting timely action to reduce harm.

Additionally, to improve representation of maternity services on trust boards, all boards are required to have a board level Maternity Safety Champion and quarterly reports to the board providing comprehensive assessment of maternity and neonatal quality and safety.

NHS England has developed a new, mandated, intensive improvement offer for the most challenged National Health Service providers, the National Provider Improvement Programme, which assesses trusts based on:

• effective board and organisational leadership;

• effective and insightful governance arrangements;

• engaged staff; and

• a shared approach to, and capability for, improvement.