The Guardian newspaper undertook freedom of information searches and reported the findings of the recent report of the UK Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations (MNSI), an arm of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which highlighted alarming disparities with regard to the safety of black and ethnic mothers and their babies receiving maternity care.

The MNSI records and monitors all instances of maternal or neonatal death, stillbirths and babies born with severe brain injuries across the NHS in England.  Their report shows that, of the 2,334 investigations undertaken in the three years between 2020 and 2023, black women’ births were nearly twice as likely to be the subject of an investigation as their white counterparts’. Sandy Lewis, the Director of the MNSI’s maternity investigation programme, said these figures “confirm what we already know about ethnic disparities in maternal care” but we need to find out more about the ‘why’. 

The 2022 MBRRACE report into perinatal mortality in the UK revealed that babies of Black ethnicity are more than twice as likely to be stillborn as babies of White ethnicity and both Asian and Black babies have higher rates of neonatal mortality than those of White ethnicity. The report from the MNSI also highlights other instances where perinatal outcomes for mother and baby are negatively impacted by ethnicity, such as severe brain injury.

The head of the Royal College of Midwives, Gill Walton, describes the problem as “purely down to institutional racism” and the Labour government included a commitment in its manifesto to work towards reducing the racial inequalities evidenced in these shocking figures.

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Read more: Thomas, T. (2024) ‘National disgrace’: black mothers in England twice as likely to have NHS birth investigated. The Guardian, 24 July.
MBRRACE (2024) UK perinatal mortality surveillance:  UK perinatal deaths of babies born in 2022 (Published July).