Improvements in maternity safety are still not happening quickly enough, with little progress made against some key Government targets and too few staff, MPs have said.
The Health and Social Care Committee commissioned an expert panel to evaluate the Government’s key policy commitments on maternity services, which found that all key areas were performing below expected levels or were inadequate.
The experts in maternity and patient safety, including its chair Professor Dame Jane Dacre and Sir Robert Francis QC, reported to MPs that, while there has been “significant progress” in reducing stillbirths and neonatal deaths, more needs to be done to reduce the premature birth rate, and the whole area of patient safety “requires improvement”.