Maternity: Broken Trust review – the furious tale of

This fine documentary about how maternity care failures caused avoidable deaths never lets the awful stories obscure the bigger picture – the need for accountability

Maternity: Broken Trust delves into the stories behind the ongoing criminal investigation and independent inquiry into the alleged failures of maternity care at the Nottingham University hospitals trust (NUHT) that it is claimed led to the unnecessary deaths of mothers and babies over the past several years.

We first meet Jack and Sarah Hawkins – a doctor and physiotherapist at the very hospital in which their tragedy would unfold – as they are compiling a timeline for the leader of the inquiry, Donna Ockenden. It covers the six days they spent, as Sarah puts it, “begging for help” from the maternity department after she went into labour with their first child, Harriet. The essence seems to be that they simply wouldn’t let her come in until – again, as Sarah puts it – “something started to hang out of me”.