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Hello and welcome to More or Less. We've been as busy as bees, turning the nectar of

statistical claims into the sweet sticky honey of insight. This week, one mathematical

legend, Hannah Fry, explores the statistics behind cancer treatments, and another, Simon

Singh, shares his quest to bring fun mathematical conversations into your living room. Our beef

with the unbelievable truth continues, this week we're looking at whether airplanes would

weigh half as much if they did without windows. And we ask whether there are more bees in

the world or stars in the galaxy. But first, in April, the former health secretary,

Jeremy Hunt, appeared on a daily mail podcast hosted by Sarah Vine to talk about safety

at maternity units in the wake of an inquiry into serious failings in maternity services

at Trozbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. During the discussion, Mr Hunt made a surprising

claim. We spend more money settling litigation claims for accidents and mistakes in maternity

units than the entire cost of every obstetrician and maternity nurse in the NHS every year.

This caught the notice of loyal listener Phil Taylor, who even mentions that he's a fan of

more or less in his Twitter profile. Phil wanted to know two things. First was this true,

and second was it a big number. Jeremy Hunt told us that he'd asked two written parliamentary

questions and the answers contained these figures. In the financial year 2018-2019, the government

paid out £952 million, just under a billion pounds, in clinical negligence claims for NHS

maternity services in England. Jeremy Hunt was also told by the Department of Health and Social

Care that the NHS in England spent £586 million on salaries for obstetrics and gynecology doctors.

Now, not all of what they do is maternity care, but a good chunk of it is. If you then add on

£126 million for salaries of maternity nurses, then you get £712 million, most of which is

...