Health secretary to meet maternity families

A bereaved dad says the health secretary has agreed to meet families affected by maternity failings in Nottingham.

When Yvette Cooper was appointed as health secretary in July, bereaved and harmed families wrote to her asking her at the time for a meeting "at your earliest convenience".

Gary Andrews, dad to Wynter, who died after failings at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust, said he spoke to Cooper at a maternity meeting in London on Tuesday.

He has said she agreed to come to Nottingham and speak to families, some of whom are calling for a statutory public inquiry into maternity care.

A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson said: "The secretary of state is committed to meeting affected families and will confirm a date with Nottingham families in due course."

A review by senior midwife Donna Ockenden concluded in June that hundreds of mothers and babies suffered potentially avoidable harm or died due to "deeply embedded systemic failures" at maternity units in Nottingham.

Andrews spoke to the health secretary on the anniversary of Wynter's birth and death, and what should have been her seventh birthday.

Cooper chaired the National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce, which Andrews also sits on.

The taskforce is developing a new national action plan for maternity care based on recommendations from a separate review by Baroness Amos.

"I took the opportunity at the roundtable to remind her that it's really important that she meets the Nottingham families as her previous colleagues have done so," Andrews said.

"She seemed amenable, she agreed, and I was left with the impression that they would be looking at dates and coming back to the families in response to that initial letter.

"As families, we've committed nearly a decade to this in some cases and it should've never taken that long.

"What drives us is that one day the penny will drop with someone to see it for the absolute injustice that it is."

Many families still believe that a public inquiry is needed in order to hold former senior managers to account.

The Nottingham Affected Families Group wrote to Cooper in July but did not get an official response.

The letter said families "would welcome the chance to introduce ourselves, share our experiences, discuss the findings of the Nottingham review, and outline the priorities that we believe require urgent national attention".

It added: "We are confident that, as previous health secretaries found, hearing directly from affected families will provide valuable insight as you begin your tenure."

Dr Jack Hawkins, whose baby Harriet died in 2016, said the Nottingham families had already met four health secretaries.

"We bear our souls when we meet very senior people like the secretary of state," he said.

"We have done it with four health secretaries so far, she will be the fifth.

"It is an awful burden on us. We will do it again because it is vitally important, but there needs to be a public inquiry.

"We cannot keep on briefing the secretary of state for them to then go to a different job.

"The only way we can deal with this now is take it away from the NHS, the NHS cannot look into itself anymore.

"We have to take it into the courts and there has to be a statutory public inquiry into maternity care in this country."

The DHSC spokesperson said: "Every woman deserves safe maternity care, and the secretary of state has made overhauling maternity services a personal priority.

"The voices of women and families are central to improving maternity and neonatal services, which is why the secretary of state chaired her first National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce this week as part of ongoing work to urgently improve services."

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