Banbury MP visits Horton Hospital to discuss recent critical CQC report

Victoria Prentis also met with the chief executive of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who took her on a tour of the midwifery unit and spoke about what is being done to improve services at the unit.

During the inspection held last October, the Care Quality Commission downgraded maternity services at Horton General Hospital from good to requires improvement and said that babies could be put at risk of harm due to poor governance and ineffective systems.

After the visit, Victoria said: “The recent CQC report into maternity services at the Horton raised some serious issues, so it was good to meet the chief executive of the trust, Meghana Pandit, onsite to discuss some of the findings further. Meghana took me to the MLU, where we were able to speak directly to some of the midwives and maternity support workers on shift.

“The team are naturally disappointed with the outcome of the report but remain very optimistic about the future. Some remedial action has already been taken since the inspection took place in October with more planned work expected in the coming weeks including the installation of a new birthing pool.

"It is important that expectant mothers are confident that they are receiving the very best care when they choose to have their babies at the Horton. I will continue to remind the Trust of this as progress is made in the coming months.”