ALL women will be guaranteed the chance to give birth at home with a National Health Service midwife within the next three years, Ivan Lewis, the health minister, will announce this week.

The promise to offer every woman the choice of giving birth at home, at a midwife-led birth centre or in hospital under a consultant will be included in the government’s maternity plan to be launched on Tuesday.

At the moment just 2% of deliveries in England take place at home but midwives believe this could increase to a third of all births.

“The proportion of overall deliveries at home remains static at 2% and we believe that, given a genuine, properly-supported choice many women would choose a home birth,” said Lewis. “Part of this strategy is to ensure that a home birth becomes a serious and realistic option.

“There was a time when more women did opt for home births in our society but that has changed over recent years.

“We know that, if we look at the evidence from other countries, where women have the confidence and support to make this a safe option, there is evidence of a significant increase in women choosing home births.”

NHS trusts will need to ensure all women have the choice of a home birth by the end of 2009. At the moment 38% of women are given the option.

In Holland a third of all women give birth at home. In Wales, where 3% of deliveries are home births, the Welsh assembly has set a target of 10% by the end of this year. In Scotland 1% of births are at home while the figure for Northern Ireland is 0.4%. Devon is the English county with the highest number of women giving birth at home, with a rate of 5%.

Belinda Phipps, chief executive of the National Childbirth Trust, said: “If Holland can manage 30% of all births taking place at home then Britain can do the same.

“In purely medical terms, about 60% of women could safely have a home birth. However, some women, even although they could have a home birth, don’t want to, perhaps because they would be dealing with their mother-in-law, for example.”

Women will also be guaranteed a named midwife throughout their pregnancy.

Lewis said maternity services would need to become a higher priority for NHS trusts. “The NHS at a local level will need to give maternity a much higher priority than has been the case in the past,” he said. “Our message to strategic health authorities is that, by the end of 2009, they will need to have the infrastructure in place to provide this right to all women.”

Lewis disputed the claim by the Royal College of Midwives that an extra 10,000 midwives were needed but said it was up to each NHS trust to ensure it had enough staff to guarantee all women had the birth of their choice.

A government-commissioned survey, published last month by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, found that most women @ are left alone for periods of time during labour and that two in five women were worried by the lack of continual care. The survey also found that although most women are happy with the care they receive, their experience of postnatal care has barely improved in the past 10 years, despite significant investment in hospitals.

A quarter of women surveyed said they were unhappy with levels of cleanliness and lack of privacy, and said that staff were rushed.

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