Investigation into maternity care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals after baby deaths

A new independent investigation into maternity care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals has begun, with families who lost babies or suffered harm meeting the inquiry chair, senior midwife Donna Ockenden, for the first time. The review, which follows years of campaigning by parents, will examine care at St James's Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary over a 15-year period and could involve up to 3,000 cases.

Donna Ockenden, who previously led major inquiries into maternity failings at Shrewsbury and Telford and Nottingham, will oversee the investigation. Speaking to MPs this week, she said health managers and staff across England must be held accountable when mistakes are made, adding: "We need to look at why in this country we are allowing so much maternity harm, and we're talking billions of pounds, to happen, why we are allowing so many staff to feel damaged by their everyday work in life and just say the tide has now got to turn."

The investigation comes after a BBC investigation found that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers in Leeds over five years may have been preventable. Parents have described a tick-box culture, delays to care, and staff shortages. The government announced the inquiry last year following pressure from families.

One family affected is Laura Parkinson, who was pregnant with twins Joseph and William in 2018. She was diabetic, and a subsequent investigation found she should have had one consultant managing both the twin pregnancy and the diabetes rather than being caught between two clinics. The hospital told her it would not have changed the outcome, but she disagrees. "I believe if they'd have induced me one week earlier when I've reported reduced movements that he would still be here," she said. "That silence is deafening."

Another mother, Tessie Weaver, was told because of her high blood pressure to go to hospital as soon as she went into labour. When she rang the maternity assessment centre, a midwife told her to stay at home. She rang back when she thought her baby Baxter had stopped moving but was told again not to come in. By the time she arrived at hospital, he had died. The trust initially told her the post-mortem results were inconclusive, but an external investigator later said the death was clearly linked to her high blood pressure. Weaver said: "From that point we felt like that consultant has either decided or been told to withhold that information from us because it really clearly links their actions or inactions to the cause of death."

A former midwife at the trust, Claire Flannery, who was team leader for the home birth service, has spoken out about the problems she tried to highlight while working there. She described having to search for basic equipment, such as a single doppler to listen to babies' heart rates being shared between maternity triage and the antenatal wards. She left last year, burnt out and physically unwell. "I became a midwife because I wanted to provide really excellent care for people and I was becoming so stretched thin," she said. An NHS England maternity review document published last year made 101 recommendations for the trust's maternity services and found that if women requested a home birth, there was a 50-50 estimated chance of it being available due to home birth staff being pulled to support clinical areas.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust said it was deeply sorry to families whose babies were harmed and is committed to working openly with Donna Ockenden and her team. It added that significant improvements are already underway in its maternity and neonatal services, but it knows there is much more to do. The investigation is expected to take several years and comes just a month after the government said maternity care across England needs radical reform to better protect mothers and babies.