A multitude of damning reports and investigations into maternity care, including the recent England-wide review by Baroness Amos, have highlighted failures that lead to devastating, life-changing, consequences for mothers and babies. 

More investigations are in the pipeline at various NHS trusts, and they will likely find many similar issues as others. As a lawyer supporting families in these cases, I see the same harm and suffering repeated again and again, and it is all avoidable.  

The horrors are now well-established and out in the open. A line in the sand must now be drawn and some change effected, finally.

Baroness Amos recommends the introduction of a maternity and neonatal commissioner to lead a taskforce charged with redesigning the maternity and neo-natal system in England.

I do not think anyone expects this to be the silver bullet, and time will tell what impact this role will have. But a new wholesale strategy for maternity safety is needed desperately. Existing, well-meaning, safety initiatives and schemes have been piecemeal, or not addressed root problems, including inadequate working environments and harmful cultures, and of course resourcing. 

A new strategy must be over-arching across all hospitals with patient safety at its core. And it must ensure lessons are learned and, crucially, acted on.

Guy Forster

President

Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)