National investigation into maternity care

We welcome the announcement today by Health Secretary Wes Streeting of a national investigation into NHS maternity services. It is a long-overdue and vital first step toward addressing the widespread, systemic failings that have caused unthinkable harm to women, babies, and families across the country.

 

We are calling on Mr Streeting to ensure that Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) is included as one of the ten units to be urgently reviewed. More than 500 Oxfordshire families, many of whom have experienced devastating outcomes under OUH maternity care, have come together to demand truth, accountability and lasting change.

 

Based on the scale and severity of the failings at OUH and around the country, we see no alternative to a full statutory public inquiry into maternity failings. These are not isolated incidents, they reflect entrenched problems in culture, leadership, clinical care and governance.  

 

Over decades, the NHS has failed to learn lessons from a number of independent reviews. A truly independent, judge-led statutory inquiry is the only mechanism to ensure meaningful and lasting change. Such an inquiry has the power to compel witnesses to attend, to give evidence, disclose documents and to protect the many whistleblowers who have come forward to raise concerns, and deliver the answers and reform families so desperately need.

 

We have written to the Health Secretary requesting a meeting in Oxford so he can hear directly from the families affected. We look forward to that conversation and to seeing Oxford included in the review.

 

This is a moment for honesty, courage, and decisive action. No hospital should be shielded from scrutiny. No family should be left behind. If this government is serious about fixing maternity care, Oxford must be part of the investigation and the public must be told the truth. Then a full inquiry must follow.

 

There can be no more excuses.  ​

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