Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
3rd Report - Black Maternal Health
Health and Social Care Committee
HC 895
Published 17 September 2025
Recommendations
20
Acknowledged
Set out how Government will monitor ICB investment and intervene in maternity services.
Recommendation
More broadly, the Government must ensure that maternity services continue to be a priority within ICB funding allocations. We ask the Government to set out in its response to this Report how it will monitor ICB investment in these services, …
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Government Response Summary
The government states that maternity services remain a core priority for ICBs and commits to continuing to monitor ICB investment in these services. They highlight existing national priorities and efforts to address pre-pregnancy health factors, but do not provide specific new details on how monitoring or intervention will occur.
Department of Health and Social Care
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Conclusions (3)
12
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Suspending adoption of RCOG’s safe staffing tool has left Trusts without clear guidance on safe staffing levels, perpetuating poor workforce supply and undermining efforts to stabilise and support maternity teams. (Conclusion, Paragraph 64) 33
Government Response Summary
NHS England acknowledges the importance of clear staffing guidance and is collaborating with the RCOG to produce a set of principles and expectations for obstetric consultant job planning, which they aim to share soon to support optimal staffing levels in maternity services.
14
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Collecting robust, consistent, and equity-focused data on ethnicity and maternal morbidity is essential to enable health services to monitor and improve their services guiding improvements in maternal outcomes. Without it, it is significantly harder to produce accurate comparisons across all ethnic groups and evaluate disparities in maternal outcomes amongst different …
Government Response Summary
The government strongly agrees on the essential role of robust ethnicity data for improving maternal outcomes and outlines the Ethnicity Recording Improvement Plan, including five areas for action, a new PRiSMM surveillance system by Q1 2026, and a Maternal Care Bundle by April 2026.
15
Conclusion
Acknowledged
We are pleased that the Government has agreed an Ethnicity Recording Improvement Plan and look forward to seeing the details when it is published. (Conclusion, Paragraph 80)
Government Response Summary
The government strongly agrees on the importance of robust ethnicity data and provides details of the Ethnicity Recording Improvement Plan, which includes 5 areas for action, a new PRiSMM surveillance system by Q1 2026, and a Maternal Care Bundle by April 2026.