Maternal Health Disparities

Part of Women and Equalities – in the House of Commons on 26 April 2023.

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Photo of Maria Caulfield Maria Caulfield The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

I am happy to place on record my thanks to Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who does fantastic work in this place. I should point out that the figure is lower than that—it is now 3.5—but it is still too high, and we are doing record amounts of work to try to reduce it. Only last month the NHS published its “Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services” with the aim of ending disparities in pregnancy and childbirth, and the maternity disparities taskforce is currently looking into pre-conception care, because many of those disparities are embedded years before a woman becomes pregnant.