A government minister has admitted that maternity care improvements should have been made "years ago", as a report suggested that good treatment was the "exception". Maria Caulfield told LBC's Nick Ferrari that the standard of maternity care "still isn't where we want it to be," as a parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma called for a national plan to improve treatment for pregnant women.
She added: "We've increased the number of midwives by over 21%, we're seeing a reduction in neonatal deaths, we're seeing a reduction in stillbirths because of the measures that we're putting in place... "We can reduce the amount of birth trauma by 20% by the measures that we're putting in. No other parts of the United Kingdom is putting these measures in and you know, we recognise that the standard isn't where he want it to be.