Labour backs Independent campaign for safer NHS

The Labour Party has backed The Independent’s campaign for a safer NHS and committed to give harmed families new rights to be involved in investigations.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth also vowed the next Labour government would reinstate a national training fund for maternity units across the NHS to help improve care.

And he pledged to ensure universities will be required to ensure medical, nursing and midwifery students will receive training in how to respond to mistakes and errors during their working life.

The Independent launched a campaign to improve safety and ensure lessons were learned from mistakes in maternity services after a leaked interim report exposed widespread failures in maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust.

The report, by midwife Donna Ockenden, laid bare appalling standards of care and repeated failures to learn stretching over a 40-year period and involving the deaths of dozens of babies and mothers. More than 50 children were left permanently disabled.

Speaking to The Independent, Mr Ashworth said: “The findings of this review are horrific and I can’t imagine the pain and grief that the families affected have had to endure.

“Patient safety should be front and centre in the NHS. Labour has already pledged to legislate for safe staffing and to increase funding for training for NHS staff, but today I will also commit to reinstating the maternity training fund to help improve maternity safety in our hospitals.

“No family should have to experience anything like this again.”

The Independent’s campaign has also been backed by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who said the call was “bang on the money” and that he hoped all parties would sign up.

Writing on Twitter, Mr Hunt, now a backbench MP after losing to Boris Johnson in the Conservative leadership election, said he was “shocked and distressed” at the findings of the review adding: “This report shows sadly that Morecambe Bay, Mid Staffs and Southern Health were not ‘one offs’ but reflections of broader safety issues.”

Mr Hunt said there was some fantastic maternity care but the “sheer scale and duration of this scandal should prompt some serious soul-searching”, adding there was now better regulation, funding for staff and new investigations.

“The single most important thing is to nurture a proper learning culture, where the first objective when something goes wrong is to learn the lessons and make sure it is never repeated,” he said.

The Independent has also partnered with Baby Lifeline, which was founded by Judy Ledger in 1981 after she suffered the loss of three premature babies.

The charity raises funds to support the care of pregnant women and babies across the world, as well as helping to deliver specialist training to NHS staff via its not-for-profit social enterprise.

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The Independent has approached health secretary Matt Hancock for comment.