Karin Smyth

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for raising this extremely important issue. It touches so many of our constituents and so many families across our country, and I know how many of them she and other Members have spoken to. As the Secretary of State said, it is an issue that keeps him awake at night. The hon. Lady spoke very movingly about her friend Steph and Steph’s son, Bendy, whom I know she remembers very fondly. We have had too many decades of similar stories, but she did good service to her friend and Bendy today. I will do my best to answer as many questions as possible—it has been a wide-ranging, respectful and thoughtful debate—but the Minister for Patient Safety, Baroness Merron, who leads on this issue for the Department, will be happy to write to colleagues where necessary. The hon. Member for Chichester asked a number of questions at the end of her speech, and I hope that I will address most of them. I completely understand why she is pushing on behalf of the families that the Secretary of State met for the maternity services plan to be outlined. Families have waited long enough, but we want to make sure we get it right, so we are taking time within the Department to discuss the next steps with officials and ensure that any plans we put out are as strong and effective as possible; we have had too many plans that have not been. Those families will receive an update on the next steps very soon. I will come on to some of the essential actions from previous reports, but I will re-emphasise that all Donna Ockenden’s recommendations were accepted and are being worked on. I will pick up on that later in my speech. On workforce and training, we will publish in the summer the refreshed long-term workforce plan. That will set out how we will build a transformed health service over the next decade, and obviously it will include midwifery.