Midwifery chief quits ahead of scandal report

THE head of the nursing watchdog quit yesterday ahead of damning report into her organisation’s failings.

Jackie Smith announced she will step down from her £190,000-a-year post as head of the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

The organisation is expected to be heavily criticised tomorrow for its part in the scandal at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, in Cumbria, where at least 11 babies and one mother died.

The deaths, between 2004 and 2014, were blamed on a ‘dysfunctional culture’ among a gang of midwives who resented doctors.

Yet the NMC took eight years to deal with the scandal. Three of the midwives were eventually struck off, in 2015 and 2017, and another suspended. Miss Smith has also been criticised over her organisation’s spending of £240,000 in legal costs to coverup a dossier related to the scandal.

The NMC had been secretly monitoring the actions of bereaved father and patient safety campaigner James Titcombe, whose son Joshua died at the hospital in 2008.

But when Mr Titcombe attempted to obtain the dossier under Data Protection Act he was sent heavily redacted documents. He later discovered the NMC had hired law firm Fieldfisher LLP to help them protect their reputation.

A report on the NMC’s actions will be published by the Professional Standards Authority, which regulates health and social care watchdogs. Miss Smith, who has been in her post for six years, will be in line for a £600,000 pension pot, including a lump sum of £15,000 and annual payments of £20,000.

She said yesterday: ‘I am immensely proud of everything we have achieved.’

Mr Titcombe said: ‘In the nine years since Joshua’s death I’ve experienced the NMC as a highly defensive organisation.

‘The NMC have badly failed in their handling of fitness to practice cases at Morecambe Bay, which in my view has put lives at risk.’