‘Difficult’ state of NHS maternity care is due to Tory inaction, inquiry head says

One of the UK’s most senior midwives has said inaction by the previous government over maternity care failures has led to the “difficult” situation in wards across England and a rise in reports of birth trauma.

Donna Ockenden, who is leading the biggest inquiry in NHS history into maternity failures in Nottingham, said the Conservatives had been given a “blueprint” for how to improve maternity services but that it had not been implemented.

“I think the current government has inherited a really, really difficult picture around perinatal care, birth care and increasing reports of birth trauma. If only the previous government had done what it said it would do, that inheritance would have been very different,” she said.

Ockenden is leading a review into maternity services at the Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust, the largest inquiry into a single service in the history of the NHS, with 2,406 affected families taking part. The findings will be published in June 2026.

She expressed frustration over the slow pace of change after her report on the Shrewsbury and Telford maternity scandal, which found that 300 babies had died or been left brain-damaged as a result of inadequate care.

“We published [that report] in March 2022 and there were 22 immediately essential actions, as well as hundreds of actions for the NHS trust,” she said. “But with the chaos that followed in the year before the general election, things got lost and we are not as far ahead with those immediately essential actions as we should be.”

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Source: The Guardian, 21 July 2025