Tony Vaughan

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I echo his comments about the petitioner Louise Thompson and her advocacy on this issue. The petitioners’ analysis is that there has been a vacuum of leadership and accountability across the system. I know that the Government are considering how best to address that, and we will hear more from the Minister later about that; but whatever happens, there has to be a structural way of providing that leadership and avoiding fragmentation and different interpretations of different guidance documents across the system. We need clear systemic change to cure this, because it has been an ongoing problem for many years and so far no answer has been put forward. The petitioner Theo Clarke told me a story that illustrates the point about the postcode lottery in maternity care, which the petitioners strongly believe would be prevented by measures to create expert national leadership and tighten up the rules. She told me that an obstetrician in London who she had spoken to recently told her that there are 87 different pieces of guidance that apply in maternity care. That does not sound like a framework; to many people, it sounds more like a large number of disparate documents, which leads to variations in interpretation between different areas. Theo Clarke’s strong view is that that leaves room for interpretation, which results in different approaches to care in different areas. In practical terms, that means that something as basic as training midwives in recognising and treating birthing injuries varies hugely between different areas. My constituent who I spoke about a moment ago trains midwives on this issue, but that training is not available everywhere, and certainly not in the same way as delivered by MASIC.