£700 'to insure each NHS birth'
The NHS spends a fifth of its maternity services funding on insurance against malpractice, according to a report by the National Audit Office. The £482m figure equates to £700 for each natural birth.
Minister: 85% of parents 'happy' with maternity care
An overwhelming majority of parents are "happy or very happy with the care they have received" in NHS maternity wards, a health minister told Daybreak.
Dan Poulter admitted there were a small number of births were "things can go wrong".
He also suggested new data about the cost of insurance in maternity wards had been oversimplified: "Less than one in a thousand claims in the NHS ends up with litigation but it is actually the quantum of each individual claim, the cost of each individual claim can be very high.
"There are very few claims but because when something goes wrong in maternity, and very tragically it sometimes does...you have got a lifetime cost of care for that particular baby because it may well be severely disabled."
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