By the end of this year, Britain will have had (at least) seven prime ministers in the past decade – and more than 700 recommendations on how to stop the ongoing scandal in NHS maternity services. None of which have – as yet – been implemented. The Ockenden review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which was published on Wednesday, adds nearly 100 more.
There are many harrowing stories in the report. But one of the most telling is about what was going on above the wards
Its findings are appalling and yet familiar, which Donna Ockenden, a senior midwife, knows better than most, given this is the third review she has published on NHS hospitals failing mothers and babies. And that is the most appalling thing about the NHS maternity scandal: that it is so widespread, so widely-acknowledged, and apparently so difficult to stop.
When Health Secretary James Murray gave a statement in the Commons yesterday afternoon, he was anxious to suggest – as every one of his predecessors who has had to respond to one of these reports has been – that the government really was going to do something to stop more families suffering. He told MPs:
‘I know that some people may want me to accept all the review’s recommendations today, but in the past too many recommendations have been accepted and then have sat on a shelf gathering dust, and we have seen more deaths and more suffering.
