UK’s largest maternity inquiry finds over 500 mothers and babies harmed or lost.

More than 500 mothers and babies suffered potentially avoidable harm or died because of poor care at a UK hospital, a damning report released on Wednesday details in the country’s latest maternity scandal.

At least 156 cases involved the death of babies, and six mothers also died at two units operated by Nottingham University Hospitals Trust in central England.

The independent inquiry is the largest maternity investigation in the history of the state‑run National Health Service (NHS), covering over 2,500 families and spanning 13 years from 2012 to 2025.

It follows a series of recent investigations that have highlighted a crisis in the care of mothers and babies in England.

Sarah and Jack Hawkins’ daughter Harriet was expected to be born healthy but was stillborn in 2016. The couple were both senior clinicians at the trust at the time.

“I just can’t compute… how they did this to us and how they did this to all these families,” said Sarah Hawkins, a physiotherapist, after the report’s publication.

“Our concerns were dismissed and not acted upon. We weren’t told the truth about what happened, even after death,” added Jack Hawkins.

The former doctor at the trust said the findings marked the end of a “relentless and at times almost unbearable 10‑year campaign” to uncover the truth about the failings.

– ‘Toxic’ –

Report author senior midwife Donna Ockenden identified a “bullying and toxic culture” at the trust’s two maternity hospitals, “infected” by a “small minority of powerful leaders.”

She condemned baby Harriet’s “avoidable death,” which she said was “compounded by a systemic cover‑up and investigations designed to mislead.”

According to Ockenden, 94 stillbirths and 62 cases in which babies died shortly after birth from conditions such as oxygen starvation and hospital‑acquired infections were recorded.

The cases included Wynter Andrews, whose parents were wrongly told in 2019 to terminate a healthy pregnancy.

Her father Gary Andrews said a clinician had told him that “if we listened to every mother’s concerns, we’d be overrun.”

“I think now I can respond to that and say if you’d listened to every mother’s concerns, there would be hundreds of mothers, babies, still alive,” he said.

In Parliament, Health Minister James Murray described the report’s findings as “chilling” and said regulators had been more concerned about “protecting clinicians” than providing accountability.

He said he had been “appalled by the neglect, incompetence, racism, discrimination, contempt and harassment that so many suffered” and pledged an action plan by the end of the year.

Maternity care scandals have also been uncovered at other hospital trusts, including East Kent, Morecambe Bay, and Shrewsbury and Telford.