Are Britain's Maternity Services Safe?

Britain's maternal mortality rate stands at 9.7 per 100,000 maternities as of 2022, up from 8.2 in 2014 and roughly double Norway's rate of 4.2.^[1] The figure places the UK above the EU average for a metric that should, in a well-resourced health system, be falling. Sixty per cent of NHS maternity units are rated 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate' by the Care Quality Commission.^[2] The disparities within those numbers are stark: MBRRACE-UK data show Black women are 3.7 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, and Asian women 1.8 times more likely — a gap that has persisted for two decades with minimal improvement despite repeated national commitments to close it.

Two landmark investigations exposed the scale of institutional failure. The Ockenden Report (March 2022) examined Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust and found 1,223 cases of harm over 20 years, including 201 baby deaths and 9 maternal deaths deemed potentially avoidable.^[3] Poor staffing, normalisation of bad outcomes and weak governance ran through every finding. A year later the East Kent maternity inquiry (March 2023) identified 45 babies who died unnecessarily, with a further 40 deaths that may have been avoidable^[4] — the same pattern of understaffing, poor CTG interpretation and a culture of blame rather than learning. These were not isolated trusts; they were systems operating under the same national pressures.