Fears NHS will repeat deadly maternity mistakes despite new review

Britain risks repeating the same deadly maternity mistakes unless ministers tackle chronic staffing shortages and get experienced clinicians to women in trouble more quickly, one of the country’s leading obstetricians has warned.Professor James Walker, the former clinical director of the National Maternity Investigations Programme and one of the UK’s leading consultant obstetricians, said the Government’s latest review into maternity care correctly identifies many of the problems blighting NHS services - but fails to address their underlying causes.“You can’t give a painkiller to mask an underlying problem,” he told GB News.“The report identifies the problems - lack of staff, poor IT systems and women not being listened to or triaged properly. But this is not something which can be done with a new commissioner or policing to enforce the rules. It needs change and investment in staffing and expert staffing.” TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say His warning came after Baroness Amos's Government-commissioned review concluded NHS maternity services in England are “not set up to deliver consistently safe, high-quality and compassionate care”, identifying staff shortages, fragmented care, poor IT systems, unsafe maternity triage and women not being listened to as major causes of avoidable harm.The report, which heard evidence from more than 450 families and visited 12 NHS trusts, called for eight major reforms, including appointing a National Maternity and Neonatal Commissioner to drive improvements across England.But Professor Walker said another layer of oversight would not solve the crisis if there were not enough experienced clinicians on the frontline.He also said women continue to come to harm because they are not always recognised as deteriorating quickly enough and escalated rapidly to consultant obstetric care.“There should be no systems,” he said.“The response should be driven by the individual patient rather than goals and guidelines and individual responses to them.”He also questioned what he described as an ideological belief in some parts of maternity care that home births or so-called “normal birth” should always be preferred, arguing that decisions should instead be based on each woman’s individual clinical needs rather than targets or philosophies. He said this important aspect was not picked up by the Amos report.His intervention comes just days after another report.Donna Ockenden’s landmark Nottingham maternity review found hundreds of mothers and babies had suffered avoidable harm over many years.Following that inquiry, Professor Walker told GB News Nottingham was “not an outlier”.Baroness Amos has now reached a strikingly similar conclusion nationally, arguing the failings exposed in Nottingham reflect systemic weaknesses across England’s maternity services.LATEST ON THE NHS:Student nurse who lost all four limbs to meningitis B issues warning ahead of fresher's weekDarlington nurses 'delighted' after winning huge payout in NHS row over trans colleagueEbola alert hospital issues major update on patient's condition after conducting testsBereaved parents say the report is painfully familiar.These include damning reports spanning back over two decades, including in Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, East Kent and Nottingham.Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford and an NHS urgent care GP, said: “We have become exceptionally good at investigating failure and remarkably poor at learning from it.”He added: “The problem is no longer identifying what needs fixing - it’s implementing it.”Professor Heneghan also questioned whether creating another commissioner would improve care on the frontline.“The report argues the problem is fragmentation. Yet one of its headline recommendations is to create another statutory office,” he said.He added: “Healthcare rarely fails because there are too few committees; it usually fails because staff lack time, experience, continuity and capacity.”The financial cost of maternity failures is staggering.According to NHS Resolution, £3.1billion was paid out in clinical negligence compensation and associated costs last year, including £1.3billion relating to maternity claims. Although maternity claims account for only around one in ten clinical negligence claims by number, they make up more than half of the total value because babies who suffer catastrophic brain injuries during birth often require specialist care for the rest of their lives. Estimated future maternity liabilities now stand at around £37.5 billion.Professor Walker said the billions spent compensating families after avoidable tragedies would be better invested in preventing them.The report has itself become controversial after Sir Bill Kirkup resigned from the investigation before publication. Sir Bill, who led the landmark inquiries into the maternity scandals at Morecambe Bay and East Kent, is understood to have disagreed with Baroness Amos’s conclusion that a drive towards so-called “normal birth”, including women being denied caesarean sections, was not a widespread national problem.Among Baroness Amos’s strongest recommendations is an overhaul of maternity triage, which she describes as increasingly becoming the AE department for pregnant women. The report says women with concerns should be assessed rapidly and, where necessary, brought in for urgent face-to-face assessment because “lives will be saved and harm reduced”.It also concludes racism and discrimination should be treated as patient safety issues rather than simply equality issues.The Government has accepted the recommendation for a National Maternity and Neonatal Commissioner, pledged to publish a national maternity action plan later this year and announced an additional £41million to improve maternity and neonatal safety.But bereaved families remain sceptical after years of similar promises.The Birth Trauma Association described the review as a “huge missed opportunity”, saying it failed to fully reflect the experiences of women harmed during childbirth, while the Maternity Safety Alliance warned that creating another commissioner risks adding another layer of bureaucracy without addressing the root causes of repeated failures.Professor Heneghan believes the NHS has reached the point where implementation matters more than another inquiry.“Families do not need another beautifully written report,” he said. “They need the last six reports to matter.”Kate Brintworth, Chief Midwifery Officer for England, said: “Too many women, babies and families have been harmed, bereaved, or badly let down by maternity care, and too often women and families who raised concerns were not listened to.“That must change – starting by giving every pregnant woman in England the comfort of knowing they will always have a midwife on the end of a call to answer their concerns if they are experiencing an emergency.“This modernises maternity services so that women who urgently need expert advice will no longer be left waiting for a call back or directed to a maternity unit voicemail – instead, they will get specialist advice straight away, helping them get the right care more quickly.“I also know midwives need the time and space to carry out thorough risk assessments. By creating dedicated teams away from busy labour wards, we can support staff to make faster, safer decisions and deliver better care for mothers and their babies.” Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter