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Former health secretary Wes Streeting has called for senior staff who refused to participate in the largest maternity scandal inquiry in NHS history to be compelled to appear before Parliament. The review, focusing on Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust, revealed that hundreds of mothers and babies endured preventable harm during their care. Donna Ockenden, who led the review, noted that while 66 senior current and former NUH staff were invited to contribute, only 35 actually took part. Streeting described the refusal of many to provide evidence as “cowardice” and “an insult” to the affected families.
Jack Hawkins, a whistleblower whose daughter Harriet was stillborn, empathized with Streeting’s viewpoint but voiced concerns about whether Parliament was the appropriate venue for further examination. Despite stepping down as health secretary in May, Streeting urged that those who declined to give evidence to Ockenden’s inquiry should be summoned by the health and social care select committee to explain their decisions. In a letter to the committee chair, MP Layla Moran, Streeting stressed the emotional toll on families and condemned what he characterized as a pervasive “cover-up culture” within the NHS.
The Ockenden review, which began in 2022, included input from approximately 2,500 families and over 800 past and present NUH staff members. While Ockenden shared the findings at an event in Nottingham, she acknowledged significant gaps in the investigation due to the non-cooperation of some senior managers. NUH’s current chief executive, Anthony May, informed the BBC that the trust’s existing leadership had cooperated fully with the inquiry. The report highlighted that alternative care could have potentially changed outcomes for 260 babies who died or were harmed under the trust’s care.
Harriet Hawkins’ case has become emblematic of the failures identified. She was stillborn at Nottingham City Hospital in 2016 after critical interventions were repeatedly delayed. An external review described the incident as worsened by attempts at systemic cover-up and misleading investigations, a point underscored by Ockenden. Jack Hawkins, who worked as a consultant at NUH, raised concerns that Parliamentary hearings might disrupt an ongoing police investigation linked to the maternity care failures. He urged caution, warning that interfering with the police inquiry could provoke backlash from bereaved families, while also expressing unease that families had not been consulted before Streeting’s proposal
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