Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made towards their target, announced in November 2014, of reducing the rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries in babies by 50 per cent by 2025.

The Government’s National Maternity Safety Ambition is to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries in babies occurring during or soon after birth by 2025. The ambition also includes reducing the rate of pre-term births from 8% to 6% by 2025.

The most recently published data which measures progress against the Ambition is for 2021 and 2022. This data coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and is out of date. It will, therefore, not reflect recent efforts and initiatives to improve outcomes. The Department is working to increase the frequency and timeliness of publications, which will allow for closer monitoring of progress against the National Maternity Safety Ambition.

According to the latest data for 2021 and 2022, the stillbirth rate reduced by 23%, and the neonatal mortality rate for babies born over the 24-week gestational age of viability reduced by 30% since 2010.

Meanwhile, the proportion of babies born pre-term, with gestational age under 37 weeks, reduced from around 8% of all births in 2017, to 7.7% in 2021, and the overall rate of brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth has fallen to 4.2 per 1,000 births in 2019, 2% lower than the 2010 baseline.

The maternal death rate has increased. In the period 2019 to 2021, the maternal death rate was 11.56 per 100,000 maternity, which is a 9% increase from the 2009-2011 baseline.

The Department will keep Parliament updated when more recent data becomes available.