England to get powerful maternity commissioner after ‘shocking’ failings

Health secretary announces move after Amos review finds childbirth and neonatal care in need of ‘urgent reform’

Analysis: Transparency, standards and a new commissioner – but does maternity review go far enough?

A powerful maternity commissioner will be appointed to push through an urgent transformation of childbirth care in England after a major review concluded that it had multiple failings.

Ministers have bowed to growing pressure by agreeing to recruit the UK’s first commissioner for maternity and neonatal care. Whoever takes on the role will pursue hospitals over persistent failures in care, ensure wide-ranging improvements are made and try to restore the faith of families in a maternity system in England that has been rocked by a series of scandals.

Maternity triage services – the childbirth equivalent of A&E – need an urgent overhaul, including more staff on duty, so that women’s concerns are acted on more quickly.

Families should get the right to seek a fresh, independent investigation when things go wrong if they are not happy with the hospital’s own inquiry.

The NHS’s “brutal” and “cruel” system of agreeing compensation with harmed and bereaved families should be replaced by a new process in which hospitals admit errors immediately.

The NHS must root out racism and discrimination that is “embedded throughout the maternity and neonatal system”.
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