Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that local maternity units provide expectant mothers with the best possible care.

The NHS Maternity Transformation Programme is delivering measures to ensure that local maternity units provide expectant mothers with the best possible care. This includes £52 million to accelerate the digital maternity programme to ensure everyone will have access to their maternity notes and information electronically by 2023/24. Midwives, general practitioners and other clinicians caring for a pregnant woman will also have easy access to information. This will improve the experience for women by reducing the burden of repeating information to each healthcare professional throughout their pregnancy and ensure the best health and care outcomes by preventing important details from being missed.

A further £6.8 million has been provided to support Local Maternity Systems to implement equity and equality action plans and targeted and enhanced Continuity of Carer to improve safe outcomes for mothers and babies from black, Asian and mixed ethnic groups and those living in the most deprived areas. In addition, local and regional leadership is being strengthened with the majority of regional obstetricians and deputy regional chief midwives’ roles now filled. The Maternity Safety Support Programme works proactively with identified trusts to advise and support them to improve their Care Quality Commission rating or address any other areas of concerns raised by other stakeholders.