Midwives’ legal action: Government must be held accountable, lawyer says

A lawyer representing nearly 1500 midwives has told the High Court in Wellington that prosecutors must be held accountable for failing to deliver on promises of higher pay and contracts for almost a decade.

The College of Midwives led a class action on behalf of Lead Maternity Carers (self-employed midwives) seeking ‘fair and reasonable remuneration’ and a change to the contract model.

It is claimed that previous governments agreed to the reform but never implemented it.

During the first day of proceedings on Monday, the College of Midwives’ lead lawyer, Robert Kirkness, spent hours outlining the history of negotiations between the midwives and the government, accusing the Crown of failing to meet its legal obligations.

He added that the battle, which has been ongoing since 2015, involved two legally binding settlements, neither of which have been implemented.

For example, the government and midwives worked together to develop a new funding model after the first settlement was reached in 2017.

However, the Department of Health has not put forward a proposal in the 2018 budget to secure sufficient funding to increase midwives’ salaries, in line with the assumptions of the funding model, Kirkness said.

Kirkness said a letter from then-director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield to the university’s lawyer showed officials did not consider the offer had “any chance of success”.

However, he claimed that he had made a legal promise to do so.

“People should keep their contractual promises, and that includes the Crown, and that applies to promises made to LMC midwives as much as to anyone else.”

But the government has “repeatedly refused” to pay fair wages, he added.

“And to be clear, fair pay is not a gift. It is payment for the hard work, the high-risk work, that LMC midwives do,” he said.

Kirkness said the midwives had repeatedly agreed to withdraw from legal action and seek mediation.

“(The College) concluded that … mediation offers the most effective and efficient way of achieving real and necessary change for LMC midwives.

“It is obvious they were wrong,” he said.

An employee of the Ministry of Health even apologised to midwives on behalf of the ministry for failing to honour commitments made at the LMC Midwifery College Conference in 2018, he added.

However, Kirkness says that to date, those promises have not been fulfilled and the midwives have had no choice but to go to court.

The prosecution will make a brief presentation on Tuesday before beginning cross-examination of the plaintiffs.

The trial was expected to last six weeks.