In her Budget statement yesterday, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced that the Scottish Government will receive the largest real time funding settlement in the history of devolution. The most important part of that announcement for midwives and maternity care assistants in Scotland is that this increase is aimed at ensuring that Scotland can ‘deliver the public services that Scotland deserves’. Unsurprisingly, this is welcome news to the RCM, but what does it mean in real terms?  

The Scottish Ministerial Taskforce for Nursing and Midwifery came about as a result of nurses and midwives making clear during the 2023 pay campaign that the professions do not feel valued. Throughout the work of the taskforce, which has included listening events and subgroups, there has been an unhelpful narrative that this must be delivered with no funding attached to it. With yesterday’s announcement in Westminster, we will now be calling for that to change and for the recommendations, which reflect the evidence and the experience of the midwifery community in Scotland, to be implemented and funded in full so that they can make meaningful change.  

The ambition of the taskforce was to:  

‘Recognise and value the contribution of the nursing and midwifery professions in Scotland by building sustainable and skilled nursing and midwifery workforces with attractive, varied, career choices across the four pillars of practice, fair work and flexibility where all are respected and empowered and where staff actively choose to stay in Scotland’s health and social care workforce their whole career.’  

This is how we build public services that Scotland deserves, by caring and valuing the workforce that make that work.  

We have been understanding of the challenge faced by governments of the fiscal climate, but that can no longer be an excuse. We know across Scotland we are not recruiting or developing the midwives and maternity care assistants we need, that the workforce plans are not being approved and the newly qualified midwives are not being employed. This needs to stop. Women and families in Scotland deserve the care that midwives and maternity care assistants want to give but are unable to due to lack of time, skill mix and available workforce.  

The ‘cost neutral’ move to a new model of neonatal care needs to be reassessed in light of having the finances to do this well so we do not disadvantage the most vulnerable within our communities.  

The lack of a commission around transforming roles to build the career structure for midwives needed to meet the current and future population needs should be a priority .  

The list goes on but we will be clear. If we truly want the public services that will change the outcomes for families across Scotland, then the biggest return of investment is in the perinatal period. Time to put the money where the ambition has always been and see Scotland back at the forefront of maternity care again.