Families whose children suffered harm or died due to NHS maternity failings have criticised a new report by Baroness Valerie Amos, deeming it insufficiently independent, and have renewed their calls for a statutory public inquiry. The Maternity Safety Alliance labelled plans for a national maternity commissioner, as proposed by Lady Amos, as "dangerous", while also highlighting a lack of scrutiny over regulators such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and General Medical Council (GMC).This comes as the Health Service Journal (HSJ) reported that Dr Bill Kirkup, who chaired inquiries into maternity scandals at Morecambe Bay and East Kent, resigned from Lady Amos’s review. Dr Kirkup stepped down from his role as an expert adviser due to a dispute over "normal birth ideology". HSJ indicated he sought a stronger position on the patient safety consequences of this ideology than Lady Amos was willing to accept.Lady Amos said in her review they ‘did not find that normal birth ideology was currently widespread in the maternity services we visited in England’ (Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images)Lady Amos said in her review they “did not find that ‘normal birth ideology’ was currently widespread in the maternity services we visited in England.”The Maternity Safety Alliance said in a statement: “It is now clear, as we feared, that this (Amos) investigation does not meet the standard of independence expected of a national inquiry, as the investigation team itself included personnel from NHS England and Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB).“Lobbying by special interest groups has influenced key recommendations, including the proposal to establish a maternity commissioner.“The recommendation for a maternity commissioner in the format proposed by Baroness Amos is fundamentally dangerous, concentrating power and responsibility in one pair of unaccountable hands. This person will not be meaningfully independent and will not be able to create real change.“The investigation has failed to address core issues at the centre of maternity failings and is marked by a clear lack of scrutiny.“It does not analyse regulators such as the GMC and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) at all, or in any useful depth regarding the CQC.“It has also failed to fulfil its own terms of reference, including by failing to determine the extent to which normal birth ideology may have contributed to avoidable harm.“There is no examination of areas such as post-death care in this report, despite this being a critical issue in Nottingham’s independent review.“There, it prompted a wider re-evaluation of maternity care by exposing the inhumane treatment of babies after death. It is difficult to believe that such failures are isolated, raising concern about what other unknown issues remain outside the limited scope of findings in this report.”The statement added: “While time was being wasted on this inadequate investigation process, an additional 814 babies have died avoidably in the NHS. The lives of 814 children are the true cost of this report.“Despite promises to the contrary, the Amos investigation has left huge gaps in analysis and understanding of what has gone wrong in maternity care, and crucially, why avoidable deaths and avoidable harm persist despite multiple investigations and reviews.“A statutory public inquiry is now urgently needed to give us the full truth of what is happening in maternity care across the country, and to give us effective and sustainable solutions…This is not just a matter of learning: we deserve answers as to why our children were avoidably injured and killed, and why the people responsible for ensuring safe maternity care failed to act even when the problems were known.”