Image source, ParliamentLive.tv

Shadow health minister Feryal Clark begins responding to Javid's statement by thanking the families who have come forward, praising their persistence and resilience for more than 20 years.

"That women were silenced and ignored at their most vulnerable when they were relying on the NHS to keep them safe is shameful. No woman should ever have to face going into hospital to give birth and not knowing whether she and her baby will come out alive," she says.

And she says for far too long the voices of women have been an afterthought in health. "This needs to change," she says.

And speaking as a recent first-time mother, Clark says she can see how overstretched maternity services are.

The NHS is losing midwives faster than they can recruit them, she says. She asks Javid what he is doing to ensure the NHS recruits the midwives it needs.

On workforce, Javid says she's right about the need to increase the size of the workforce - but last year's acceptances for student nurses and midwives were the highest the country had seen in decades. "But clearly there's much more to do," he says.

Sajid Javid wraps up his statement to the House of Commons by promising "we will act swiftly so that no families have to go through the same pain in the future."

He says the Ockenden report is a "devastating account if bedrooms that are empty, families that are bereft and loved ones taken before their time".

And he says it "has given a voice to those families who were ignored and so grievously wronged and it provides a valuable blueprint for safety and safe maternity care in this country for years to come".

Sajid Javid has moved on to talk about the need to listen to patients and their families.

He says "the report shows a systemic failure to listen to families affected, many of whom had been doggedly persistent in raising issues over several years".

And that: "It is vital that across maternity services that we focus on safe and personalised care where the voice of the mother is heard throughout".

Since the initial report was published in 2020, the government has pledged £95m to maternity services across England - to boost the workforce and fund programmes for training and development, the health secretary says.

Sajid Javid says today's report makes dozens of recommendations: 66 for the local trust, 15 for the wider NHS and three for Javid himself as health secretary.

All 84 recommendations have been accepted by the trust, NHS and Javid.

He says earlier today he spoke to the trust's boss - who was not in post at the time of the report's failures - and stressed that the recommendations must be acted on promptly.

The health secretary goes on to say that many people will want the individuals responsible for maternity failings at Shropshire hospitals to be held to account.

Sajid Javid says it won't be appropriate to name people.

But he says "a number of people who were working at the trust at the time of the incidents have been suspended or struck off from the professional register and members of senior management have also been removed from their posts".

There is also an active police investigation - Operation Lincoln - which is looking at around 600 cases, he says. He says he's not able to comment further because it's a live investigation.

Sajid Javid tells MPs that the report also highlights serious issues about the culture within the trust - including reports that staff had witnessed bullying.

And Javid goes onto talk about C-sections, saying the report shows there was a culture within the trust to keep the number of caesarean sections low.

It is right, says Javid, that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the Royal College of Midwives have since said they regret their campaign for so-called normal births.

And it is vital that maternity services focus on safe and personalised care where the voice of the mother is heard throughout, he says.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid says Donna Ockenden told him of one case where important clinical information was kept on post-it notes.

These were then swept into a bin by cleaners "with tragic consequences for a newborn baby and her family", he tells the House of Commons.

There were repeated cases where the trust failed to investigate incidents, and when investigations did take place they didn't follow the expected standards. The failings continued to as late as 2019, he adds.

Heath Secretary Sajid Javid begins by telling the Commons that the review was set up in 2017 following concerns from families. Its original scope was to cover 23 cases, but since it began many more families reported concerns.

This is one of the largest inquiries relating to a single service in the history of the NHS, he says.

The scandal led to unimaginable trauma for so many people, he adds. The effects of the failures were felt across families, communities and generations.

The Health Secretary Sajid Javid is on his feet in the House Of Commons making a statement on the Ockenden report to MPs. Stay with us for updates.

The Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) responsible for Shropshire has promised improvements to maternity services in the county following the Ockenden report.

Its executive director of nursing and quality, Zena Young says: "We deeply regret the horrific experiences these families went through and that we failed to provide the care they deserved."

She says the CCG has improved the way it listens to the experiences of women and families using maternity services and increased funding to bring in more staff.

The CCG says staffing numbers now match nationally recommended levels.

Michael Buchanan
Social Affairs Correspondent, BBC News

The numbers are enormous, shocking even for those of us who long suspected there was something far wrong with the care at the trust.

But the crucial thing to remember is that what the failings highlight are individual families who’ve grieved in private and at times been lied to by a trust that seemed uninterested in helping them to understand what happened or to learn any lessons.

Reading the report, there seems at times to have been an almost casual disregard for life - mothers have explicitly told me of being told, you’ll be fine, you’re young, you can have another child.

The central question now is how does the trust convince the women of Shropshire that it’s currently providing a safe service - Donna Ockenden’s remarks about care and culture in the trust in 2022 raise significant questions about the ability of the leadership team there to drive through the many changes that are clearly needed.

Boris Johnson has opened Prime Minister's Questions with praise for the review carried out by Donna Ockenden and her team.

He says they had taken a "compassionate approach" to the "distressing review of maternity care".

He adds: "Every woman giving birth has the right to a safe birth and my heart therefore goes out to the families for the distress and suffering that they've endured."

As we've been reporting, a major inquiry into the UK's biggest maternity scandal has been published today. If you're just catching up, here are the key things the report found:

• More than 200 babies may have died and many others left with life-changing injuries due to repeated failures at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust between 2000 and 2019
• Mistakes were not investigated and there was a failure of external scrutiny
• There was a reluctance to perform caesarean sections which resulted in many babies dying during birth or shortly afterwards
• In many cases, mothers and babies were left with life-long conditions as a result of their care

• Parents were not listened to when they raised concerns about the care they received
• There was a tendency to blame mothers for their poor outcomes, in some cases for their own deaths
• Where cases were examined, responses were described as lacking "transparency and honesty"
• The trust failed to learn from its mistakes, leading to repeated and almost identical failures
• A culture of bullying, anxiety and fear of speaking out among staff at the trust "that persisted to the current time"

The chief executive of the Patients Association says she is sceptical about whether the culture will change at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust following the Ockenden report.

Rachel Power tells the BBC's News Channel: "Sitting here right now, I don't have faith in that, because there was a persistent failure in there of clinicians to listen to patients and their families and this simply has to stop."

She says clinicians across the country need to listen to patients and their families.

"I do think that the responsibility lies with national leadership holding local trusts to account," she adds.

Here's the moment the author of the report into maternity failings says she is "deeply concerned" that families continue to come forward with worries about the safety of care they received.

Donna Ockenden says seeing these repeated themes makes it clear that the trust still has "significant learning to undertake".

Chief executive of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, Louise Barnett, said earlier it continued to make improvements "so we are delivering the best possible care for the communities that we serve."

Image source, PA Media

A number of the families affected by the Shropshire maternity failures were present for the publication of the Ockenden report.

And it was an emotional occasion for many of them.

Although the report was commissioned in 2017, many have been battling for much longer to make their views heard and Donna Ockenden praised them for coming foward.

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

An interim version of today's report, published in 2020 made seven "immediate and essential" actions for all maternity services across England.

These included enhanced safety, listening to women and families, staff training and working together and risk assessment throughout pregnancy.

At the time, NHS England committed to spending £100m improving maternity safety, while hundreds of senior NHS maternity and neonatal staff across England were to get "leadership training".

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust previously said most of the actions raised in the interim report had already been completed.

Image source, Phil Coomes

The BBC has spoken to some of the parents whose babies died after failings in care at the Shropshire hospitals at the centre of the Ockenden report.

They include Carley McKee whose daughter Keeley was just 31-hours-old when she died in 2010 after medics failed to spot she was suffering from pneumonia. The following year Carley's husband died, while serving in Afghanistan.

"It's still the best day of my life, I woke up with my husband and my daughter, I had a family," says Carley. "The next day, I saw her eyes roll and that was it, she was gone."

Hayley Matthews' son, Jack Burns, was 11-hours-old when he died in 2015. Staff had failed to spot he was suffering from a serious infection, Group B Strep. Hayley had been in labour for 36 hours and had repeatedly asked for a Caesarean section.

"They need to listen to the mothers," says Hayley. "You tell them that something's not right and they don't listen, they think they know best, but they don't always."

Image source, Phil Coomes

Among the mothers who received treatment at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust was the Reverend Charlotte Cheshire, 44, from Newport, Shropshire.

She gave birth to son Adam, now 11, in 2011 in a very difficult labour. She says he looked unwell when he was born but her concerns were dismissed by staff.

When it was finally discovered that he had Group B Strep infection, he was rushed to intensive care where he stayed for almost a month. Charlotte says her son NOW HAS multiple severe health problems.

"He was first diagnosed as hearing impaired then a few months later as visually impaired. After that a diagnosis of asthma... and then eventually when he was two-and-a-half we were told he was autistic. And it's ultimately become clear over the years that he's got very significant learning difficulties.

"He's 11-years-old but developmentally he's about four."

She says the lack of care Adam received led to him being the way he is - which the trust strongly denies. Watch more of her story here:

A total of 1,592 clinical incidents involving mothers and babies were reviewed by the Ockenden team, with the earliest case from 1973 and the latest from 2020.

In each case there is a story to tell.

They include Carley McKee's daughter Keeley, who was just 31-hours-old when she died in 2010 after medics failed to spot she was suffering from pneumonia.

And Hayley Matthews' son, Jack Burns, who was 11-hours-old when he died in 2015 after staff failed to spot he was suffering from a serious infection.

You can read more about those stories in this BBC News article.