Recent rises in older motherhood and obese women having babies have contributed to maternity care becoming more complicated. Photograph: Jeff Gilbert/Alamy
Damning inquiry into services in England reveals falsification of medical records after ‘negligent’ care
Hospitals that cause harm and injury to women and babies during childbirth often resort to a “cover-up” of their mistakes, falsify medical records and deny bereaved parents answers, a damning report has found.
“Negligent” care has devastating emotional and psychological consequences for families, disputes between maternity staff have a “disastrous” impact on mothers, and ethnic minority and poorer women have worse outcomes because of racism and discrimination, Lady Amos said.
Recent rises in older motherhood and obese women having babies have also contributed to maternity care becoming more complicated, the ex-Labour cabinet minister added in a report the government commissioned amid mounting alarm about NHS childbirth services in England.
“The system is not working for women, babies and families, or for staff,” Amos concluded after spending months talking to hundreds of families and maternity staff.
“We have seen maternity and neonatal services trying to respond in difficult circumstances and dealing with competing pressures but too often failing to deliver the safe care that women, families and babies expect and deserve, at times with devastating consequences.”
NHS trusts continue to provide poor care because they are doing too little to improve its quality and safety as a result of not learning lessons from previous maternity scandals, she added.
Lady Amos, who chaired the investigation. Her final report is due in the next few months.
“It is a source of continuing distress to families, and great frustration to staff, that the areas identified in previous reviews and investigations as requiring action do not seem to have been addressed or have only been partially addressed. This cycle must stop,” she said.
The switch-on, the first of its kind in Britain, has been welcomed by the government, which sees projects like this as a way of bolstering energy, and by people from Cornwall, who take pride in their mining heritage and hope for an economic boost in a deprived part of the West Country.
Ryan Law, chief executive of GEL, said he was overjoyed at the launch, which has been almost 20 years in the making. “To finally reach this point is exciting – and a bit of a relief,” he said.
GEL says the plant will generate enough renewable electricity to power 10,000 homes, with the plan to open more, bigger sites in Cornwall.
Within a decade it says it will be producing enough lithium carbonate, a key material used in the production of rechargeable batteries, to supply about 250,000 electric vehicles a year.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a visit to Sierra Space in Louisville, Colorado on February 23, 2026. (Photo by Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the company that owns the AI assistant Claude would be punished unless it drops all ethical guidelines.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to punish the artificial intelligence company Anthropic if it doesn’t let the Pentagon use its technology however it wants—apparently even to create autonomous killer drones or conduct surveillance of Americans.
Anthropic’s powerful AI model, Claude, is currently the only one permitted to handle classified military data, and the company was awarded a $200 million contract last year to develop AI capabilities for the Department of Defense to use alongside other AI firms.
However, the company’s usage policy prohibits its use for mass surveillance and for the development of autonomous weapons—such as drones that attack targets without a human operator.
These limitations have infuriated the Defense Department leadership. On Tuesday, Hegseth called Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, to a meeting at the Pentagon, where he demanded “unfettered” access to Claude without any guardrails.
This goal was outlined last month in the department’s “AI Strategy” memo, which called for the US to adopt an “AI-first warfighting force” and for companies to allow their technology to be deployed for “any lawful use,” free from ethical safeguards.
According to a senior defense official who spoke to Axios, Hegseth issued an ultimatum to Amodei on Tuesday: If he does not grant the Pentagon unrestricted use of Anthropic’s technology by 5:01 pm on Friday, the department would take measures to coerce the company.
It would either declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” effectively blacklisting it for military use and ending its contract, or it would invoke the Defense Production Act, which would force the company to tailor the product to the military’s needs.
While it would not be an unusual step for the Pentagon to cut ties with Anthropic, threats to declare it a supply chain risk have been described as extraordinary.
Jessica Tillipman, the associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University, who specializes in AI governance, wrote on social media that the threat of “declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk is deeply problematic,” as it’s “generally something we reserve for products that create security risks, and using it in this way undermines its purpose.”
As Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote on Wednesday for Reason, it “would mean anyone who wants to work with the US military in any capacity must sever ties with the AI company,” which could deal a major blow to the business.
Anthropic's CEO Explains His Refusal to Back Down to the Pentagon.
Amodei explained his deep concerns over "autonomous drone swarms" and mass surveillance.
He pointed out a crucial reality: our military's constitutional protections rely entirely on human soldiers having the… pic.twitter.com/IsmbKecwsB
Last month, Amodei published an essay about how “AI-enabled autocracies” could use the technology to surveil and repress their citizens and wage war on less developed countries:
A swarm of millions or billions of fully automated armed drones, locally controlled by powerful AI and strategically coordinated across the world by an even more powerful AI, could be an unbeatable army, capable of both defeating any military in the world and suppressing dissent within a country by following around every citizen…
A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow. This could lead to the imposition of a true panopticon on a scale that we don’t see today.
Amodei reportedly resisted Hegseth’s demands to lift restrictions at Tuesday’s meeting, refusing to budge on the two key issues of mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Following reports of the meeting, the company has said it still wants to work with the government while also ensuring its models are used in line with what they could “reliably and responsibly do.”
A senior Pentagon spokesperson said the military must be free to use the technology how it sees fit. According to the Associated Press, the official argued that “the Pentagon has only issued lawful orders and stressed that using Anthropic’s tools legally would be the military’s responsibility.”
Shot: Pentagon demanding Anthropic drop insistence that its AI model not fire weapons without some form of human sign off
The question of whether the Pentagon has issued only “lawful” orders is in dispute—in fact, the Pentagon is fighting to cut the retirement pay of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired Navy captain, after he made a video in November reminding active duty troops that they have a duty not to obey illegal orders.
That video was made in response to reports that Hegseth had given orders to bomb the survivors of one of the administration’s boat strikes in the Caribbean—an act described as a potential “war crime” amid a broader campaign that legal experts have said is illegal under both US and international law.
The military also reportedly used Claude as part of another legally questionable act last month: the operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which involved bombing across Caracas and killed at least 83 people. It is not clear how the model was used during the attack.
While the Pentagon has not specified which restricted activities it wishes to pursue using Anthropic’s technology, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said that with his demands, Hegseth was essentially telling the company, “Let us use your AI for mass surveillance, or we’ll pull your contract.”
Under President Donald Trump, Gallego added, “corporations are punished for refusing to spy on American citizens.”
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