A Care Quality Commission (CQC) review of leadership at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) has exposed serious leadership failings in England, stating that “not all leaders had the necessary experience, knowledge, capacity, capability to lead effectively”.

CQC inspectors carried out a two-day inspection of BPAS’s Warwickshire headquarters last February.

In their subsequent report, published on 1 June, CQC investigators raised numerous concerns about BPAS leadership, which was found to be “out of touch with what was happening on the front line and could not identify the risks and issues described by staff”.

“Risks, issues, and poor performance were not always dealt with appropriately or quickly enough”, the report states, “and there was a lack of clinical oversight and engagement in incident investigation and how individuals were held to account”.

BPAS’s responses to incidents involving patients also lacked “openness and transparency”, and following its investigation, the CQC was “not assured BPAS had sufficient processes in place to ensure staff in all registered and satellite locations could raise concerns without fear of reprisal”.

On the BPAS leadership, the CQC concluded that “there was a disconnect between the operational and clinical elements, specifically nursing & midwifery as evidenced within the organisational structure… There was a lack of governance and healthy check and challenge at board [level].”

Incidents not reported or investigated, safety concerns persist

The report noted that while previous CQC discoveries of abortion facility failings had been addressed, BPAS had not embedded its responses across England.

The CQC listed several recent instances of BPAS abortion facilities failing set standards, including BPAS Bournemouth where aborted baby remains were dumped “into a shared vessel”, as reported by SPUC last year.

The CQC also noted BPAS Birmingham South where it found that “not all serious incidents were investigated in a timely way or reported to the Care Quality Commission in line with the statutory requirements of the CQC registration regulations for notifiable incidents”, including “incidents where women required transfer to an acute hospital”. Such a “failure to notify the commission is a criminal offence”, the CQC stated.

Last year, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for praying silently outside the same Birmingham abortion facility.

Another BPAS failing noted by the CQC was its “safeguarding and management of clients aged under 18”, which was found to be “generic and confusing”.

In 2022, the CQC criticised a BPAS abortion facility in Doncaster for failing to implement a system “for assessing, managing, and responding to [the] risk of deterioration in children”. This finding followed a previous damning report, threatening BPAS Doncaster with closure, after 12 patients were transferred to the local NHS acute trust after complications between December 2020 and May 2021.

“A national scandal”

SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “That such serious and potentially devastating shortcomings at English abortion facilities have been ignored by the BPAS leadership is a national scandal.

“This damning CQC report follows a succession of shocking revelations at BPAS exposing the abortion provider’s cavalier attitude towards women’s safety – a failure that goes right to the top.

“So many BPAS facilities, including in Merseyside, Doncaster and Middlesbrough, have failed safety standards in recent years. Safeguarding and even consent have gone missing, while many women have been sent to hospital after passing through the BPAS abortion mill.

“The discarding of broken unborn bodies, dumped in cupboards without ceremony, is also part of the same disregarding ethic that pervades the entire abortion industry – giving up women’s safety and spiritual wellbeing, and the lives and bodies of their unborn babies, in favour of abortion ideology.

“While peaceful pro-lifers are arrested for praying silently for the victims of abortion, the abortion industry and its leadership are protected from any meaningful repercussions. While this CQC report shines a light on their lack of care and empathy for the women that the industry claims to serve, BPAS’s appalling record will no doubt continue until our society truly holds it to account.”