Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the report by the Care Quality Commission, entitled Safety, equity and engagement in maternity services, published on 21 September 2021, what steps his Department is taking in response to the findings in that report on lessons learned and the recording of incidents involving patients’ safety on maternity wards.

NHS England and NHS Improvement recently invested an additional £95 million in maternity services to support the recruitment of 1,200 more midwives and 100 consultant obstetricians. An equity and equality strategy, funded by a further £6.8 million, has been published to address the causes of inequalities in outcomes and experiences of maternity care. The NHS Resolution Maternity Incentive Scheme is working to improve the recording of incidents through its ten safety actions, by encouraging the use of the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool and improving the quality of reporting to the Maternity Services Data Set.