When I read the report on the maternity services at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, I wept. An independent inquiry into the deaths of mothers and babies at the hospital had long been campaigned for by the Mail and it was seeing, in black and white, the stories of the women and infants and what they had suffered that reduced me to tears.
A total of 250 cases were examined in this interim report, chaired by Donna Ockenden, a senior Midwifery Advisor to the chief executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Thirteen women and 42 babies had died. There were many stillbirths. Ockenden writes of a lack of kindness and compassion among some members of the maternity team.