The National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, led by Valerie Amos, published an interim report on February 26, 2026. This was covered on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour programme on the same day. Here is the AIMS Campaigns Team feedback on that coverage. We hope that our feedback will improve the quality of the coverage of maternity issues on this and other BBC programmes, and publish it here in the interests of transparency.
Feedback to the Woman’s Hour team
February 26, 2026
Thank you for covering today, at the top of your programme, the latest output from the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation currently underway in England. A number of our volunteers listened in.
It was especially helpful for you to replay an extract of an interview with Valerie Amos from an earlier programme (the ten past eight Today piece), so that your listeners could hear directly from Valerie Amos. We suggest that it might be useful in your programme notes if you could provide a link to that full interview.
Overall, we felt that your piece - together with the Today piece - allowed for a good airing of the severity of the investigation findings, and the scale of the challenges ahead. We look forward to the final report, and to playing our part in scrutinising the recommendations, continuing to work collaboratively to see the necessary changes delivered. We were disappointed, however, to hear your coverage on two points.
First, we are concerned at the lack of interrogation around the proposal for a Maternity Commissioner, repeated on your programme by Theo Clarke and warmly supported by Pippa Bennett Walker. It is easy to call for such additive structural change, but to date AIMS has not seen any proper analysis of how this proposal might work and how it might lead to effective improvement in the maternity services. Proposals for change that may offer false hope, however superficially attractive and galvanising, help no-one.
Second, we are concerned that the following statement from Pippa Bennett Walker was not put into context by your presenter: “As a white woman you could walk into a hospital and feel valued, and as a Black and brown woman you walk into a hospital and you don’t …” It is possible that you feel that this statement was countered by Theo’s discussion of her own traumatic birth experiences, and we do appreciate this, but our concern remains.
AIMS is well aware of the longstanding and unacceptable differences in maternal and perinatal deaths for Black and brown women compared with white women, as well as the appalling racist and discriminatory mistreatment that Black and brown women, and others, face. We are pleased to witness and support the new and growing activism around equity. However, the fact that maternity care is even worse for these groups does not mean that white, middle-class women universally receive good maternity care. As your team will be aware, repeated investigations have found that it is not the case that white women from less deprived areas always/ generally feel welcomed, supported or listened to by the maternity services.
A shift to equitable care is urgently needed. We hope and trust that work that is undertaken to address inequities will result in a maternity service that is better for everyone. But without a fundamental transformation of the current dysfunctional system we doubt that limited equity initiatives alone will be enough to create a maternity service that meets the needs of all.
Finally, we appreciate that this was not the focus of today’s piece, but as a member of the NHS England Maternity and Neonatal Stakeholder Council, established after the publication of the Better Births report, we feel it important to note that there have been many initiatives over recent years aimed at addressing the issues raised again in today’s report. As Valerie Amos said this morning, a critical look at how far these initiatives have managed to deliver, and the obstacles in their way, is essential, if we are to learn lessons and move effectively from hearing women’s experiences to delivering effective change. It might be helpful, perhaps, for your listeners to hear more about the improvement initiatives that have been going on, and the examples of good practice to be found around the country. Otherwise, your coverage suggests that there has been no effective action, which is misleading.
On a point of detail, your presenter summed up this item by saying that the Investigation’s final report will be out in April, but please note that Valerie Amos said on the Today programme this morning that this will now be June.
Thank you for the work that you do.
Jo Dagustun, on behalf of the AIMS Campaigns Team
We hope that this page is of interest, especially to our colleagues in the maternity services improvement community.
The AIMS Campaigns Team relies on Volunteers to carry out its work. If you would like to collaborate with us, are looking for further information about our work, or would like to join our team, please email campaigns@aims.org.uk.
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