Perhaps the most dismaying thing about the interim maternity care report commissioned by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, is how little of it is new: entrenched cultural and leadership failures; staff shortages and crumbling facilities; stark racial and socioeconomic disparities, with black women nearly three times more likely to die than white women; and hospitals still covering up mistakes. These grave and painfully familiar shortcomings apply to England, where health policy is devolved; Scotland is conducting its own maternity review.
So far there is little indication of how Lady Amos, the Labour peer leading the inquiry, believes that this failing system can be sorted out. This is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive document, which draws heavily on the 8,000 consultation responses received so far. But some overlap in her final report – expected in the next few months – with the 748 recommendations already placed before ministers over the past decade is inevitable. The question facing her team, and Mr Streeting, is what they can try that hasn’t been tried before, or how they can do similar things differently.
