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Bereaved families have warned the number of victims of a maternity scandal could snowball at an alarming pace” after an urgent inquiry was announced. Parents who say they were ‘gaslit’ and ‘blamed’ have been fighting for years for an investigation into the ‘repeated failures’ of hospital maternity services in Leeds. But now an ‘urgent’ inquiry has been announced by Health Secretary Wes Streeting who said he was "shocked" about “potentially avoidable harm to babies and mothers" at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the largest teaching hospital in Europe. In June, the Care Quality Commission downgraded maternity services at the trust to 'inadequate' after describing serious risks to women and babies and a deep-rooted "blame culture" that left staff afraid to speak up. A BBC investigation claimed the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) over the past five years may have been prevented. After meeting with the parents on Thursday, Streeting said a thorough investigation was required to understand what had "gone so catastrophically wrong" at the trust's maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James's University Hospital. According to the BBC, they have spoken to more than 70 families who have described traumatic care, with some cases going back more than 15 years. In 2023, an inquest concluded Fiona Winser-Ramm and Daniel Ramm's first baby, Aliona, died at Leeds General Infirmary in 2020 as a result of neglect from medical staff. After years of campaigning, Fiona said: “After our daughter died, we were told they had never seen anything like it before and we believed it initially. We believed that we were the only people this had ever happened to. “And in the depths of our despair and grief, we needed to find other people that understood us and were the same as us…We have all been thrust into this life that none of us should be living. “None of us should know each other. The only place that we should ever potentially have become friends is through a baby or a child playgroup – instead, we are supporting each other through the worst possible time… “This is the only way that we can now parent our children. Our girls all deserved a voice. They all deserved a life and we deserved that life with them. “Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust have stolen that from all of us. We now have to be the voice for our children, but that also goes wider to being the voice for other women and children, because everybody deserves to be safeguarded.” She added that "we can't quite believe it yet, I think the scale of this inquiry will be enormous. There are so many people who don't even know they are victims yet and it is going to snowball at an alarming pace." Daniel Ramm added: “It has been a long time coming. We have, as a group of families, spent years trying to essentially expose what the problems have been at Leeds…” Amarjit Kaur and Mandip Singh Matharoo's daughter Asees was stillborn at the same hospital. "We know we are not alone, and that there's other families that have experienced what we have," said Amarjit. “They tell us this shouldn't have happened but there is nothing about what is being done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Lauren Caulfield's baby Grace was stillborn in 2022 and an investigation found failings in her care. "We shouldn't, as bereaved grieving parents, have to do this for so many years.” She said it was “quite a relief to know that, you know, we don't have to keep fighting.” Leeds now joins a growing list of trusts under investigation over potential maternity failures across England, including Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury, East Kent and Nottingham, where an inquiry is ongoing. Mr Streeting said: "This stark contradiction between scale and safety standards is precisely why I'm taking this exceptional step to order an urgent inquiry in Leeds. "We have to give the families the honesty and accountability they deserve and end the normalisation of deaths of women and babies in maternity units. "These are people who, at a moment of great vulnerability, placed their lives and the lives of their unborn children in the hands of others - and instead of being supported and cared for, found themselves victims." In a statement, the trust said it was already "taking significant steps to address improvements". Chief Executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Brendan Brown, said: “I want to start by offering the families an unreserved apology not only for their experience but also for the fight they have had in raising these concerns. “And I want to assure them of our commitment to engage in the independent inquiry openly, honestly and transparently .”
