Labour will be 'guided' by Nottingham maternity review in deciding if public inquiry needed

Experienced midwife Donna Ockenden is currently running what is thought to be the largest review into maternity services in NHS history in Nottingham, involving the cases of more than 1,800 families.

Nottinghamshire Police will also be setting up a criminal investigation into Nottingham maternity services, called Operation Perth, beginning Spring 2024.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) says maternity units across England have the overall poorest standards of any hospital service, with two-thirds of them not as safe as they should be.

Families and campaign groups, including the Maternity Safety Alliance, have long been calling for a statutory public inquiry.

Mr Streeting told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “There are definitely national lessons to be learned out of what has happened in Nottingham.

“Donna Ockenden and actually what some incredibly courageous whistle-blowers have uncovered is incredibly serious.

“What terrifies me is I think many of the lessons that Donna Ockenden has already identified apply right across the NHS.

“Labour has already committed, as part of the biggest expansion of NHS staff in history, to train up more midwives which is part of the problem – but a lot of these other issues about culture, about listening to whistle-blowers, listening to parents particularly new mums, there are lots of lessons to be learned.

“I would be very much guided by Donna Ockenden on this.

“I trust her, I trust her advice."

Jack Hawkins has been campaigning for safe maternity services alongside his wife, Sarah, since their daughter Harriet’s death at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) in 2016.

He says had a public inquiry began when they first raised their concerns, it could have already concluded, saving money and lives.

But he had added that he was ‘delighted’ Mr Streeting had shown a real understanding of the issues.

He said: “For too long it has always been easy to just talk about staffing, and this is not a staffing issue.

“This is, as he says, a wider issue, including culture.

“We are struck by the number of reviews in maternity services and yet we keep on seeing the same scandals.

“We have spent a lot of time thinking about how we change this, we have spent a lot of time with other families around the country in how we change this, and we believe a statutory public inquiry is the only way.

“A statutory inquiry sets out to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? Who is responsible?

“I think we know the answer to the first question reasonably well but we don’t know the answers to questions two and three.

“One of the things we are struck by is the complete lack of accountability for when there has been serious harm caused by negligence and neglect.

“We need to understand why and the only way to do that is to have people under oath giving evidence."

Anthony May, NUH chief executive, said recently he wished to apologise to women and families for the ‘shortcomings identified’ by Ms Ockenden so far.