§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the recommendations made by the maternity services advisory committee in its report on ante-natal care recently published; and if he will make a statement as to what action he intends to take on these.
§ Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg:Copies of the committee's report have been placed in the Library of the House.
The report does not, in the main, make formal recommendations of the kind contained (for example) in the hon. Member's report on Perinatal and Neonatal Mortality. Rather it seeks to provide authoritative guidelines on points of organisation and good practice, accompanied by checklists against which health authorities and professionals can critically examine their services and identify scope for improvements.
310WSome 11,000 copies of the report have already been distributed, sufficient for health authority members, their teams of officers and managers at unit level all to receive personal copies; it has also gone to family practitioner committees, community health councils and local authorities, and to relevant professional voluntary organisations. While the committee's report speaks for itself, I particularly welcome its encouragement for local maternity services liaison committees; I am sure all those concerned will find the whole report of value in reviewing their antenatal services.