Select committee: Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 11
Fourth Report - The safety of maternity services in England
Published 6 Jul 2021
Paragraph 71
Addressed to Department of Health and Social Care
Health and Social Care Committee Safety of maternity services in England All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We believe that HSIB’s ability to take a broad and independent view of the services and factors contributing to maternity incidents is a valuable step in the right direction to learning from maternity incidents. It is essential that an independent, standardised method of investigating the most serious incidents is maintained. However, there is still work to be done to improve the timeliness of investigations and the relationship between HSIB and trusts to ensure there is local ownership of recommendations made and investigations maximise learning at the local level. That relationship should not be confined to senior management; all members of the team, and in particular junior members of the clinical team, should be able to engage with an investigation in a manner which increases learning and the implementation of recommendations. Trusts should also improve local and regional sharing of key learnings particularly through Local Maternity Systems (LMS).
From: Health and Social Care Committee, Fourth Report - The safety of maternity services in England (HC 19), paragraph 71, 6 July 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 21 September 2021 (deadline 6 September 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and responds to each of its 15 recommendations, accepting some in full or in part, rejecting one and stating that it is considering others.
- On the recommended £200-350m a year funding increase, the Government says it "is considering this recommendation" and will take the recommendations on funding for staffing "into consideration", alongside an assessment of midwifery and obstetric workforce levels.
- It "accepts" the recommendations on obstetric training posts, safety training targets, and training for Continuity of Carer, while accepting others only "in part", including ringfenced training budgets and a disparity target.
- It rejects the Rapid Redress and Resolution Scheme, stating it "does not intend to put in place" the scheme, and that the scheme "did not address the high and rising cost of clinical negligence cases".
- On litigation reform and compensation, the Government says it will publish a consultation, and "Decisions on next steps will be taken following the consultation".