Police recruit more officers to widen their inquiry into baby deaths

A POLICE investigation into the country’s worst maternity scandal is being widened – with extra officers drafted in to examine baby deaths.

West Mercia Police is probing the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals in Shropshire, where dozens of newborns are feared to have died needlessly.

An interim NHS inquiry in December warned that failures had been ignored for decades, and that in some cases staff were obsessed with blaming mothers instead.

The final report, which will publish findings on 1,862 suspect cases, will be the largest review into a single service in the NHS’s history.

When the Daily Mail exposed the unfolding scandal in August 2018, hospital bosses denounced the coverage as ‘scaremongering’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘factually untrue’.

Last June West Mercia Police launched Operation Lincoln to examine whether there was a criminal case to answer in any of the deaths or incidents of poor care.

The probe covers cases from October 2003 to the present day. The force, which is liaising with the NHS inquiry, aims to recruit three full-time investigative support officers to work on Operation Lincoln, which has received £4million from the Home Office and £650,000 from the Police and Crime Commissioners’ office.

The force has also set up a dedicated website for the investigation which urges affected families to get in touch.

The NHS review – which is being led by an independent midwife Donna Ockenden – was commissioned in 2017 to examine just 23 suspicious cases. But dozens of other families came forward, many of whom reported similar tragic events.

Some had lost babies to infections which could have been detected and treated, others had been forced into natural labours with terrible consequences.

The interim NHS review, which examined an initial 250 of the 1,862 cases, warned that maternity units favoured natural births, and were slow to switch to caesareans when labours weren’t progressing. Monitoring of babies’ heart rates was inadequate and midwives were often reluctant to inform consultants of problems.

The final report is likely to name individual staff. Several of the most senior managers have since left.

‘Investigation will cover 18 years’