Mum leading calls for inquiry into maternity care: 'Healthy babies don't just die in labour'

• Video report by Jonathan Brown

A mother who is leading a campaign for a national inquiry into maternity care in memory of her stillborn daughter has said: "Healthy babies don’t just die in labour."

Emily Barley's daughter Beatrice was stillborn at 41 weeks last year after staff at Barnsley Hospital mixed up the heart rate of mother and baby.

The hospital has since apologised.

Ms Barley, 34, from Rotherham, has founded the Maternity Safety Alliance, campaigning for safe and compassionate care for new mothers.

Hundreds of other parents whose babies have died or been harmed at the hands of the NHS have joined her in calling for a full statutory inquiry into maternity care.

Ms Barley said: "I’ve got lots of photos hand and foot prints and clothes [Beatrice] wore and she was just beautiful amazing. She was incredible, perfect. Best moment of my life and the worst one as well."

She added: "I got told sometimes this happens and it's nobody's fault, that's not true. Full term healthy babies don’t just die in labour that’s not what happens."

The alliance has written to the government asking for an England wide investigation into the wake of repeated maternity scandals.

Fiona and Dan Winser-Ramm are backing the campaign in memory of their daughter Aliona who died three years ago.

Fiona said: "Our whole lives had been ruined in the blink of an eye."

Aliona was alive for just 27 minutes. An inquest ruled she died after "neglect by midwives" at Leeds General Infirmary.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust apologised for the care it provided and has since put improvements in place.

Dan said: "We could just get another five years down line and more will happen and then at that point the government will mandate change, they will force a public inquiry but don’t wait for that to happen have a public inquiry now that looks at whole systems analysis and saves babies lives now."

Those calls have been backed by medical negligence lawyers, who say they see the same issues repeated at different hospitals.

Sharon Allinson, a partner at Ashtons Legal, said: "What we see is minority of what happens and there is some really good maternity care out there… but tell that to the families who don't go home with their baby.

"Some of issues experiencing doesn’t seem to be shared learning on national scale."

In a statement, the Department of Health and Social Care said: "Nationally, we have invested £165 million a year since 2021 to grow the maternity workforce and improve neonatal services and we are promoting careers in midwifery by increasing training places by up to 3,650 over the past four years."

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