The city of Leeds is at the center of a growing national reckoning over maternity care standards, as Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced on October 20, 2025, that a fully independent inquiry will examine repeated failings at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. The move comes after years of campaigning by bereaved families, whose stories of loss, trauma, and frustration have drawn public attention and prompted calls for accountability and reform.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which operates some of the largest teaching hospitals in Europe, is now among 14 trusts under national scrutiny for failures in NHS maternity and neonatal services. According to official data cited by the Department of Health and reported by both Sky News and the BBC, the trust remains an outlier on perinatal mortality, despite its scale and resources. In June 2025, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) downgraded the trust's maternity services to "inadequate," highlighting serious risks to women and babies, and exposing a deep-rooted "blame culture" that left staff afraid to speak up about problems.
The inquiry was sparked by cases that have shocked the nation and devastated families. Earlier this year, a BBC investigation revealed that at least 56 babies and two mothers died at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust over the past five years in ways that may have been preventable. The broadcaster spoke to more than 70 families who described traumatic care, some dating back more than 15 years. Among them were Fiona Winser-Ramm and Daniel Ramm, whose daughter Aliona died in January 2020 at Leeds General Infirmary. An inquest found "a number of gross failures" that "directly contributed" to her death. Four years later, Amarjit Kaur and Mandip Singh Matharoo's daughter Asees was stillborn at the same hospital.
For these families, the announcement of an independent inquiry is the culmination of years of advocacy and heartbreak. "When after our daughter died, we were told that they had never seen anything like it before. And we believed it initially," Fiona Winser-Ramm told Sky News. "We believed that we were the first people, the only people that this had ever happened to. And in the depths of our despair and grief, we needed to find other people that understood this, that were the same as us." Her husband, Daniel, echoed the sentiment: "We have, as a group of families, spent years trying to essentially expose what the problems have been at least that we've known have existed all along."
Other families have described feeling dismissed, gaslit, and even blamed for the tragedies they endured. Lauren Caulfield, whose baby Grace was stillborn in 2022, said investigations found failings in her care but that she was met with "a very, very defensive kind of leadership team" and "almost blamed for a lot of things that happened in my experiences." She told the BBC, "Suddenly, I feel quite relieved and vindicated that we are having this independent inquiry to know that our work, our children’s death means something – it can make a difference."
The sense of relief is palpable, but so too are demands for a thorough and transparent process. Families are awaiting the terms of reference for the inquiry and have called for police involvement, particularly regarding potential corporate-level issues. They are also advocating for the inquiry to be chaired by midwife Donna Ockenden, who led the review into maternity failings at Shrewsbury and Telford and is currently overseeing the Nottingham review. "It’s imperative that Donna Ockenden is appointed to lead this review," said Fiona Winser-Ramm. "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."
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has acknowledged the gravity of the situation. "This stark contradiction between scale and safety standards is precisely why I’m taking this exceptional step to order an urgent inquiry in Leeds," he stated. "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."
Brendan Brown, chief executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, has issued an unreserved apology and committed to engaging openly with the inquiry. "I want to start by offering the families an unreserved apology, not only for their experience, but also for the fight that they've had in raising these concerns. And I want to assure them of our commitment to engage with the independent inquiry openly, honestly and transparently," he told Sky News and the BBC. He also emphasized that the trust is "already taking significant steps to address improvements to our maternity and neonatal services, following reviews by the Care Quality Commission and NHS England."
Yet, for many families, apologies are not enough. Questions remain about what senior leaders knew and when. Sir Julian Hartley, who led the trust for ten years until 2023 and is now head of the Care Quality Commission, expressed his own regret: "While I was Chief Executive of Leeds Trust, I was absolutely committed to ensuring good patient care across all services, including maternity, but clearly this commitment wasn't enough to prevent some families suffering pain and loss. I am truly sorry for this." Lauren Caulfield, among others, has called for the inquiry to examine what Sir Julian Hartley knew about poor maternity care during his tenure.
The Leeds inquiry is part of a broader national effort to confront and remedy systemic failings in maternity care. The trust is included in a rapid national review of maternity and neonatal services across England, led by Baroness Valerie Amos, which was launched in June 2025. This follows a series of high-profile investigations into other trusts, such as Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury, East Kent, and the ongoing Nottingham inquiry, all of which have uncovered shocking failures, ignored women’s voices, overlooked safety concerns, and exposed toxic cultures within NHS maternity units.
Bereaved families in Leeds have found solidarity and purpose in their campaign for change. The Leeds Hospitals Maternity Family Support Group, now 150-strong, is made up of families who have lost babies or mothers, or who have experienced serious injuries or near misses. As Amarjit Matharoo put it, "Leeds is probably (one of) the biggest teaching hospitals in Europe, so it is going to have that knock-on effect, if things can get improved in this hospital, it will be easier to implement the change in the smaller hospitals."
As the city and the nation await the next steps, the hope is that the inquiry will finally deliver answers, accountability, and the reforms needed to ensure that no more families will have to endure the pain that so many have already suffered.
