A culture of blame on maternity wards in England is holding back improvements in safety and leading to preventable infant deaths, a report from a group of MPs has found.

The research comes from the health committee, a cross-party group of MPs whose role it is to scrutinise health services and government policy in the UK.

They have been studying maternal health outcomes in England's National Health Service (NHS) compared to other high-income counties and found that England was lagging behind — finding that if services were as safe as Sweden’s, it’s possible that the deaths of 1,000 babies could be avoided each year.

Instead, despite high-profile cases of serious failings in hospitals in East Kent and Shrewsbury and Telford, improvements have been too slow, experts speaking to the panel of MPs concluded.

In fact, almost 2 in 5 (38%) of NHS maternity services in England require “improvement for safety,” Professor Ted Baker, the Care Quality Commission’s chief inspector of hospitals, told MPs.

“That is a significant number, and larger than in any other [medical] specialty. It’s a reflection of the cultural issues in maternity services nationally” he said.

“Although the majority of NHS births are totally safe, failings in maternity services can have a devastating outcome for the families involved,” the chair of the health committee and former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said.

“Despite a number of high-profile incidents, improvements in maternity safety are still not happening quickly enough,” he continued. “Although the NHS deserves credit for reducing baby deaths and stillbirths significantly, around 1,000 more babies would live every year if our maternity services were as safe as Sweden.”

Read the full article about maternity services in England by Helen Lock at Global Citizen.