A senior investigator has resigned from a government-commissioned review into NHS maternity services, alleging that the final report was altered to remove criticism of a push for normal births. Dr Bill Kirkup, who previously led inquiries into maternity scandals at Morecambe Bay and East Kent, stepped down from Baroness Valerie Amos’s review over a dispute concerning "normal birth ideology".
While Lady Amos stated in her review that her team "did not find that ‘normal birth ideology’ was currently widespread in the maternity services we visited in England", Dr Kirkup strongly disagreed, advocating for a more robust stance. His own investigation into Morecambe Bay had previously concluded that midwives were pursuing normal birth without intervention "at any cost".
