Parliamentary activity

Answering body: Department of Health and Social Care

The Government has introduced measures to improve the systematic recording of perinatal deaths.

The Perinatal Mortality Review Tool was launched in 2018 to support National Health Service trusts to undertake systematic, multidisciplinary, high quality reviews of the circumstances and care leading up to and surrounding each stillbirth and neonatal death. Reports from the tool enable organisations providing and commissioning care to identify emerging themes across a number of deaths to support learning and changes in the delivery and commissioning of care to improve future care and prevent the future deaths which are avoidable.

In May 2019, MBRRACE-UK introduced a new real-time data monitoring tool, incorporated into the MBRRACE-UK web-based system. The tool allows registered users of the MBRRACE-UK surveillance system to monitor, filter and summarise the perinatal deaths reported for their organisation, using live surveillance data from the MBRRACE-UK system.

Answering body: Department of Health

In the ‘Learning not blaming: The government response to Freedom to Speak Up, the Public Administration Select Committee report on clinical incidents, and the Morecambe Bay Investigation’, the Government accepted the recommendation to remove the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) current responsibility and accountability for statutory supervision of midwives in the United Kingdom and committed to changing the law as speedily as possible.

The abolition of the statutory Midwifery Committee at the NMC is a consequence of the Law Commission review of professional regulators. The Midwifery Committee does not have a role in the statutory supervision of midwives. The NMC is considering how midwifery advice will be secured by the NMC if the Midwifery Committee is, after consultation, abolished. It has set up a Midwifery Panel of interested parties to do this.

The proposals for a new design of supervision for midwifery, incorporated setting up a task force in each country of the UK under the auspices of each UK Chief Nursing Officer. They are currently working through plans to create new mechanisms and considering what systems and processes will replace the Local Supervising Authorities.

Answering body: Department of Health

In the ‘Learning not blaming: The government response to Freedom to Speak Up, the Public Administration Select Committee report on clinical incidents, and the Morecambe Bay Investigation’, the Government accepted the recommendation to remove the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) current responsibility and accountability for statutory supervision of midwives in the United Kingdom and committed to changing the law as speedily as possible.

The abolition of the statutory Midwifery Committee at the NMC is a consequence of the Law Commission review of professional regulators. The Midwifery Committee does not have a role in the statutory supervision of midwives. The NMC is considering how midwifery advice will be secured by the NMC if the Midwifery Committee is, after consultation, abolished. It has set up a Midwifery Panel of interested parties to do this.

The proposals for a new design of supervision for midwifery, incorporated setting up a task force in each country of the UK under the auspices of each UK Chief Nursing Officer. They are currently working through plans to create new mechanisms and considering what systems and processes will replace the Local Supervising Authorities.