Senior Conservative James Cartlidge has demanded a “culture of openness” from the NHS after a “devastating” new report into “failing” maternity care.
Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Defence Secretary said the initial findings are “shameful” and “worrying” for parents across England.
A new maternity and neonatal services investigation has uncovered shocking allegations of racism, and births in undignified circumstances.
The interim report, published by Baroness Amos as part of her National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation across England, found deep-rooted issues across the NHS and a system that “is not working for women, babies and families, or for staff.”
Delivering his verdict on the report’s initial findings, Mr Cartlidge told GB News: “They’ve not released the final report, so I’ve only seen what’s been reported about it second hand, as it were.
“But it does sound pretty extraordinary from what I was reading.”
Highlighting his own concerns as a parent to four children, he stressed: “The key issue is about being transparent, particularly with parents. It’s a very stressful situation. I’m a father of four, I’ve had twins and been in that situation.
“You’re in maternity wards, it’s such a crucial moment in life and it causes a lot of anxiety, especially if there are complications.
“And in that you want parents to have access to all the information about what’s happening, and I think it’s that lack of transparency, that’s what worries me reading this report.”
James Cartlidge has hit out at a report into the NHS maternity services, branding the initial findings ‘shameful’
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GB NEWS
Declaring that the NHS must implement a “culture of openness”, particularly with parents, Mr Cartlidge said: “When the full final report comes out, I’m sure my colleagues in the shadow health team will be studying it carefully.
“But for me as a parent, as much as a politician, the NHS must have a culture of openness.
“It’s been said so many times, but if you are a parent who’s had a child in that situation, that’s devastating enough. But to then not get the full facts about it, I think it is pretty shameful personally.”
Host Stephen Dixon then pointed out the historic maternity care scandals across decades in Britain, telling the Tory MP: “What’s worrying, I think, for any parent or potential parent is the fact that we’ve had maternity unit scandals across various parts of the country for many years now.
“And every time there’s a full investigation, it’s all on the front pages of the papers and we are told this must not happen again – and here we are in 2026 and it is happening again?”
Baroness Amos concluded that maternity and neonatal services are ‘failing too many women, babies, families, and staff’
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GETTYAgreeing with Stephen, Mr Cartlidge argued: “I think that’s a very fair point. It does feel, doesn’t it, like there have been repeated problems and they’ll have been under successive Governments.
“Obviously it has to be said there can be huge variance between trusts, certainly you don’t get the same service everywhere.”
He made clear: “I think there needs to be a lot of learning from what’s going on, but for me, I do think it’s important this point about transparency.
“There has been a culture in the NHS of not being open enough about what’s happening, and I’ve seen it as a constituency MP in one of my local hospitals.”
Mr Cartlidge told GB News that there needs to be ‘transparency’ between the NHS and parents
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GB NEWS
Outlining what needs to be the “key takeaway” from the report when it is published in full, the Shadow Defence Secretary concluded that parents must know the “truth” about what happens to their children under NHS care.
He said: “If you’re a parent in these situations, you’ve had one of the children that’s involved in this report where there’s been this terrible outcome, the thing you are owed above all is the truth about what happened.
“And it seems depressing that in this supposedly such an open age in terms of media that we’re still not getting that.
“So I hope that when the full and final report comes out, one of the key takeaways from it is how you get that greater level of transparency, particularly between the system and those who use it, especially parents and especially parents who’ve had a very difficult experience in terms of childbirth.”