NHS settles two multimillion claims a week over maternity

THE NHS is settling around two multimillion-pound payouts every week for failings in maternity care, its head of complaints has told MPS.

This year, the largest single payout for clinical negligence was about £37 million, said Helen Vernon, chief executive of NHS Resolution.

Ms Vernon was giving evidence to the all-party Commons health and social care committee on the safety of maternity services in England when she confirmed the figure.

She went on to add that around half of all cases dealt with by NHS Resolution do not result in a compensation payment, which means there could be relevant information to learn from mistakes that is missed.

Questioning Ms Vernon, Jeremy Hunt, the committee chairman and a former health secretary, said: “When I was health secretary, I used to have to settle, through you, about two multimillion[-pound] damages claims every week for families that were born with severely disabled children.”

He said he was “shocked” that families had to prove clinical negligence had taken place to secure compensation, adding that this requirement could mean “battle lines are drawn” early on in the process, making it harder to get an “open, transparent resolution”.

A framework set up by NHS Resolution, which aims to settle cases outside court and compensate families “in real time ”, could bean“alternative approach”, Ms Vernon suggested.

James Titcombe, a bereaved father affected by the Morecambe Bay scandal, told the committee that there are “very clear signs” mistakes in hospital maternity care are being repeated.

He said that families were acting as the “canary in the mine” to raise the alarm around shortcomings in care.