NHS maternity safety funding cut by more than £80m despite warnings, Times finds

The government has cut more than £80m from maternity safety funding in the last two years, despite repeated warnings that mothers’ and babies’ lives are at risk, The Times reports.

Last year the Department of Health and Social Care pulled 98 per cent of ring-fenced funding for maternity safety improvement initiatives, months after Wes Streeting, then the health secretary, said the maternity care crisis kept him “awake at night”, The Times reports. About £93m out of £95m of annual funding was removed from schemes to hire more midwives, improve training and expand continuity of care, and was reallocated to general NHS services, according to data obtained by the Health Service Journal and cited by The Times.

New analysis by The Times found that the total extra funding the government has pledged for maternity care makes up just 17 per cent of what it has cut. That investment includes £5m for improved monitoring and medications for women at higher risk of blood clots and £11m to improve equipment and facilities in triage services. But there has been no increase in budgets for hospitals to hire frontline staff or improve training, despite repeated warnings that shortages are risking lives.

Ministers have not pledged any new money for frontline care or staffing since two damning reports in June, which both warned that understaffing was a key factor fuelling the safety crisis, The Times reports. Health secretary Yvette Cooper has insisted maternity care is “a priority” and that she “will not stop until every mother is given the care she deserves”.

The Times notes that the number of mothers dying during pregnancy, labour or after birth remains at a 20-year high, with six in ten maternal deaths preventable with better care. In June, a report by senior midwife Donna Ockenden found that 260 babies died or suffered serious harm avoidably at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. Dr Alison Wright, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said maternity services were straining under huge demand and long-term underinvestment, and needed “ring-fenced, sustained funding and safe staffing levels”.

Sources: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/nhs-maternity-safety-funding-cuts-0kngzmq65