Scotland is recording the lowest number of births since records began. Yet as fewer babies are being born, nearly £100 million has been paid out by NHS Scotland in maternity negligence claims over the past five years. Those two facts sitting side by side should trouble anyone who cares about the state of healthcare in this country.
A major investigation by The Herald has examined the pressures facing Scotland’s maternity services, and the findings are sobering. The Patient Safety Commissioner has warned that maternity services must be “urgently redesigned” and that the current system is “not working.” A legal specialist in clinical negligence says families are being “devastated” by “avoidable mistakes.”
The problems are not confined to one hospital or one health board. In Caithness, a mother described the “nightmare” of travelling more than 100 miles twice to Inverness to give birth after local maternity services were downgraded. In Edinburgh, a mother accused NHS Lothian of failing to act on warning signs before her baby was delivered by emergency caesarean, leaving her daughter with a catastrophic brain injury.
The Scottish Government has established a maternity taskforce and pledged a national review of services. Scotland’s women’s health champion has warned that the review must not end up being a “total whitewash” and that families must have a meaningful role in shaping its direction. Campaigners in the north have gone further, saying they would support legal action if necessary.
Maternity services sit at the heart of the NHS. They are where families begin and where clinical decisions carry lifelong consequences. The combination of falling birth numbers and rising negligence payouts points to a system under severe strain, where capacity has been cut faster than demand has fallen, and where the consequences of getting it wrong are being measured in damaged lives and public money. The Scottish Government’s review cannot come soon enough.