The first details of the government’s new national maternity and neonatal taskforce have emerged in a letter sent to families, the New Statesman can reveal. As announced by the Health Secretary Wes Streeting in June, the document confirms the group will be chaired by him, reflecting his personal commitment to improving maternity services. The women’s health minister Gillian Merron will be deputy. The taskforce will have around 15 members in total and be operational early in the new year. It will turn the recommendations from the national maternity and neonatal investigation, led by the Labour peer Valerie Amos, “into a national action plan”, the letter says. These recommendations will “supersede” those from previous maternity inquiries, Merron told a conference on 18 November.
The letter states that the taskforce will “hold the system to account for delivering tangible improvements in outcomes and experiences for women and babies”. Three of its 15 members will represent families, and each of those voices will be part of a wider “reference group” of 15-20 families. It’s proposed that representatives from the relevant professional bodies – the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), and the British Association of Perinatal Medicine – will sit on the taskforce too, as will an academic, an international expert and someone representing those campaigning for greater equity in maternity outcomes.
However, some families are concerned about the plans. The New Statesman understands that feedback on the structure of any proposed taskforce, sent by the Maternity Safety Alliance (MSA) of more than 200 bereaved and harmed families back in July, is not reflected in the current proposals. This letter warned the Health Secretary that previous working groups on maternity had been “dominated by organisations” that, they believed, “have been and continue to be part of the problem”. This included the royal colleges, some charities and “academics and others who are driven by ideology at the cost of safety”. They urged for this not to be repeated and instead for families to “be the central, dominating voices in the taskforce”. The RCM, for example, was noted in the 2022 inquiry into East Kent maternity services for advising the head of midwifery not to blow the whistle on dangerous practices and instead “to resign and move on” or risk being “unemployable in a senior position”. Both the RCM and RCOG had also supported targets for reducing Caesareans and prioritising vaginal deliveries, Emily Barley from the MSA pointed out, “which had caused untold harm to mothers and their babies”.
One bereaved parent told the New Statesman that to have families make up only a fifth of the taskforce’s membership is “tokenistic and insulting”, and does not reflect the pledge to put families who have experienced bereavement and harm from NHS maternity or neonatal care at the centre of the drive to make improvements. “The starting principle should be to have at least 51 per cent of any taskforce made up of harmed families,” Barley said. Families do not speak with one voice, however – and nor does the MSA claim to represent everyone. I have spoken with others who believe, for example, that the professional bodies must be involved in driving change, as it is their members who will ultimately have to deliver it. “I think the voices of representatives of midwives and doctors do need to be part of whatever process there is,” Barley explained, “but I don’t know if putting them directly on the taskforce and sitting them round a table with harmed and bereaved families is the way to do that. It seems a way to set up arguments that are potentially quite traumatising.”
There is a dual fear that having just three family voices might both be unrepresentative of wider viewpoints and place an enormous burden on those few individuals. As one parent put it, “However hard they might try, each family is – rightly – primarily concerned with their child and their case.” Just as with clinicians, there will be an “unconscious bias”. Streeting has been mindful of placing too great a burden on a small number of families. He told campaigners in a letter in June that family representatives “should not feel they bear the sole burden of representing all families”, and that there would be other ways for alternative family voices to feed into the process. Moreover, responsibility for success of the process sat with him as Secretary of State.
There appears to be greater consensus on the need to hear from those who have not engaged publicly before, especially those from minority communities or from more deprived economic backgrounds. Both groups experience worse maternity outcomes. While Streeting has been aware of this in his correspondence with families, some argue the proposals currently on the table do not adequately address the issue. “There doesn’t seem to be any effort to go out and find the unrepresented – and 45-60 people is just not going to do that,” one campaigner said. Nor will these wider family reference groups “be able to cover the breadth of experience”, Barley said, referring to the roughly 800 preventable baby deaths and hundreds of brain injuries that occur each year. “That’s without even talking about injuries to mothers.”
Moreover, “the taskforce is only as good as the time that Wes stays Health Secretary,” one parent told me. Families acknowledge the Health Secretary’s genuine personal commitment to improving maternity and neonatal services, but fear the current process is reliant on him staying in post long-term. “If you order a public inquiry, it’s not reliant on political whims.”
Families have been asked to provide feedback on the proposals by 9 December, including on specific individuals suggested for membership of the taskforce. The government will consider responses during the Christmas break before finalising the taskforce’s membership in early January 2026.
[Further reading: Britain’s next maternity scandal]
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