Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the annual assessment by the Care Quality Commission State of Care 2021/22, published on 21 October 2022 and updated on 30 June, what steps they are taking to improve maternity services rated as inadequate or requiring improvement; and what is their timetable for making those improvements.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has launched a maternity inspection programme to help trusts to take targeted action where improvements are needed. As part of this programme, CQC will inspect all National Health Service acute hospital maternity services that they have not inspected and rated since April 2021. The programme is designed to show how services are responding to current challenges and determine what extra help they may need, and to give hospitals an objective assessment of what they are doing well and how they can improve. It also aims to give women and their families an up-to-date view of the quality of maternity care at their local hospital trust.

Through this programme, CQC will be able to better understand what is working well to share good practice to help services learn and improve, and to show where there needs to be national action to combat the challenges services face.

CQC is working alongside NHS England, who take the lead on driving improvements to maternity services, to ensure people using NHS maternity services across the country receive good, safe care during pregnancy, labour and postnatally. The maternity programme is ongoing and will complete once all relevant maternity services have been inspected.