Baroness Amos, Chair of the current ‘rapid review’ into maternity services commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has today (9th December 2025) issued an interim report indicating that maternity care failings are ‘much worse’ than she imagined they would be.
Co-founder of the Maternity Safety Alliance, Emily Barley, has issued the following statement in response:
“When the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting announced this 'rapid investigation' we were promised justice, accountability, change, and more. Instead of any of that, today in Baroness Amos's 'initial reflections' we see staff feelings prioritised and the use of language that minimises the severity of the avoidable harm taking place in NHS services every single day.
And so we must be absolutely clear: we did not have a "poor outcome" or a "poor experience" as described in Amos's interim report - our children were starved of oxygen and killed or sustained catastrophic life changing injuries.
We are also told that the findings of this superficial and completely inadequate review will replace actions and recommendations that resulted from in-depth and robust investigations like the one into Shrewsbury and Telford maternity services - this is completely unacceptable.
Wes Streeting and Baroness Amos are attempting to lull the general public into thinking that this inferior Rapid Review will be sufficient to tackle the maternity crisis. It isn’t. It will do more harm than good and the rapid review should be stopped and replaced with a comprehensive statutory public inquiry.
Despite our engagement with Wes Streeting on the review, it seems he is providing only lip service and failing to deliver on his promises. Wes knows that this is entirely the wrong process to fix the deep seated and long-standing failings in maternity care, and we do not understand why he is allowing this farce to continue.”
All media enquiries should be directed to:
