Midwives like me should go on strike – the safety of Britain’s families is at stake

Industrial action can be organised in a way that is safe and responsible; a chronically underfunded, under-resourced maternity service cannot

On 30 March, after years of watching our maternity service hurtling towards breaking point, midwives like me dared to believe that change might finally come. That day in March saw the release of the Ockenden Report: a review of catastrophic, system-wide failings in Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust that led to the deaths of dozens of women and babies.

I shuddered while reading the report; its catalogue of horrors was all too familiar. Those of us with boots (or blood-spattered trainers) on the ground know that short-staffing, inadequate resources, toxic workplace cultures and profuse apologies to birthing families have become the norm in overstretched maternity units across the UK.

We midwives have sought help from our unions, we’ve written petitions to Number 10, we’ve marched and held vigils, and in some cases – mine – we’ve even written books about the harsh realities of modern midwifery. None of these efforts has been met with meaningful change.

Surely after Ockenden, we thought, surely the government would sit up and take notice of the tragic deaths of women and children? Surely politicians would fall over themselves to promote what seems like a straightforward issue with unanimous public support? Surely generous budgets would issue forth, like coins pouring from a winning slot machine, and surely the imminent NHS pay offer would promise fair recompense to staff who have run themselves ragged trying to deliver safe care and healthy babies?

Surely not. Another week in Westminster, and the government has played an absolute blinder of short-sighted stinginess. On 19 July, the government announced that it had accepted the NHS Pay Review’s recommendation to raise the salary of most NHS staff, including nurses, midwives and many doctors, by an amount that would equal a 4 to 5 per cent pay rise for most Agenda for Change (AfC) pay bands.

In real terms, this equals a massive pay cut, given the current 9.4 per cent rate of inflation – which stands at a 40-year high. This is less than the uplift offered to teachers and police, and it follows in the wake of industrial action by a slew of public sector workers including rail staff, refuse collectors and barristers.

The phrase “kick in the teeth” may be overused, but it remains grimly apt: such a derisory, real-terms pay cut places the government’s steel toe cap firmly in the jaw of hardworking NHS staff who have jeopardised their physical and mental health over the past two years in ways that the majority of those in Westminster could never imagine.

In an even more astonishingly insensitive act of arrogance and hypocrisy, the government announced a shiny new Women’s Health Strategy on the very same day it released its pay offer. Admittedly, this strategy, with its promise of enhanced training for medics, new women’s health hubs, and a commitment to eradicating the “gender data gap”, is long overdue.

However, an announcement that the government must have thought would be an easy PR win has turned out to be a spectacularly bungled own goal.

Who exactly do they think will hang around to implement the Women’s Health Strategy? Surely not the nurses, midwives and doctors who will now be sorely tempted to leave their roles when their wages don’t keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living? Surely not the 51.9 per cent of midwives who told the Royal College of Midwives’ most recent staff survey that they were already considering a career change? Or the 63.1 per cent who reported regularly feeling burnt out because of work?

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The NHS has survived on the broken backs of midwives (and nurses, doctors and ancillary workers of all stripes) for too long. Westminster cannot expect to kick hard-working staff in the teeth and then see them crawling back for more.

We midwives are known for putting others’ needs above our own, and for working a kind of magic in the direst of circumstances, but even we have a degree of self-respect, and even we have our limits. This inadequate pay deal has found those limits and pushed hard against them.

While this week’s pay offer was shocking, the real surprise awaiting this government is that the women and birthing people in our care aren’t the only ones who can push. We midwives can push against indignity and hardship, too, and this next push will be strong and sustained.

The RCM is balloting its members to accept or reject the pay deal, and if current sentiment among my colleagues is any indicator, then a vote to strike won’t be far behind. Industrial action can be organised in a way that is safe and responsible; a chronically underfunded, under-resourced maternity service cannot. We will do whatever is necessary to protect our profession; nothing less than the safety of Britain’s families is at stake.

Leah Hazard is an NHS midwife and the author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story. Her next book, Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began, will be published in March 2023