Baby scandal NHS tried to cover up

Blame shifted to mothers after hundreds of deaths

HUNDREDS of babies died needlessly because of disastrous failings at a hospital trust, i n the NHS’s worst ever maternity scandal.

A damning report, published yesterday, found that distraught mothers were routinely blamed for their children’s deaths by callous maternity staff.

Families said a ‘toxic culture of bullying’ within the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust had allowed the shocking failings.

Over decades of woeful care, deaths of babies and mothers were often ignored or met with lacklustre investigations.

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said: ‘This is a tragic day for families across Shropshire, who have had it confirmed that hundreds of precious babies died needlessly. Babies’ skulls were fractured and bones were broken in excruciatingly traumatic births that would never have happened if mothers had been listened to.’

The Daily Mail was accused of scaremongering by the trust after our revelations detailing how suspicious maternity deaths at its hospitals were spiralling in 2018. The shocking report details how:

■ The maternity unit was slow to move to caesarean sections when necessary;

■ Oxytocin, a drug commonly given in childbirth, was used incorrectly to increase contractions with often disastrous results;

■ Staff regularly resorted to forceps deliveries against recognised protocols;

■ Midwives routinely took the lead during births and were reluctant to alert more senior consultants when problems arose;

■ Blatant shortcomings that if detected could have prevented scores of other deaths from unfolding were therefore not spotted, with staff instead ‘focused on blaming the mothers’ in some cases.

The review, carried out by senior independent midwife Donna Ockenden into an initial 250 of 1,862 cases, found that grieving families seeking answers were ‘dismissed or not listened to at all’.

Staff including consultants used ‘flippant’, ‘abrupt’ and ‘dismissive’ language to mothers who were clearly in distress, which ‘compounded’ their grief. In one case, a distraught mother was described as ‘lazy’ by an obstetrician in 2011 and told her suffering was ‘nothing’.

Geoff Wessell, assistant chief constable at West Mercia Police, said an investigation into possible corporate manslaughter is continuing.

While no staff were named in yesterday’s interim report, it emerged that NHS bosses and senior health staff will be ‘named and shamed’ in the final report next year.

The report said that its study of 1,862 suspect cases will eventually be the largest ‘mass review relating to a single service in the history of the NHS’ when completed.

Richard Stanton, who was praised for unearthing the scandal with his wife Rhiannon Davies after the death of their newborn daughter Kate Stanton-Davies in 2009, said the report was ‘ bittersweet’. He added: ‘This was all preventable. What is clear that there has been an absolute toxic culture from the top down at the trust – it’s a bullying culture that has enabled this.’

Miss Ockenden called for a series of recommendations in the report to be implemented ‘as a matter of urgency’ in maternity wards.

NHS trusts across England were told to implement seven recommendations while the Shropshire trust was given 27 actions to carry out. Most of the cases covered by the report occurred between 2000 and 2019 but several are thought to date back as far as 1979.

Louise Barnett, chief executive of the trust, yesterday apologised for the ‘pain and distress that has been caused to mothers and their families due to poor maternity care’.

‘This was all preventable’