"Statistics are not needed to back this up - it's called many years' experience working on labour ward every day."
Eeky - this is the sentence that makes me believe that you are choosing to rely on anecdotal evidence rather than factual. Yes, your anecdote is true, but that says nothing whatsoever about how many homebirths end up in such deliveries - and that is the important fact that you are choosing to ignore.
It would be far more convincing if you were able to tell us how many homebirths there are in your catchment area, and how many of those end up in deliveries such as the one that you describe. Or if you could show us statistics to prove that homebirths end up in such deliveries "every single day, to a minority of very unfortunate women."
I have done a brief search, and have come up with a host of articles on homebirth. One, a 5 year prospective study of risk of booking for a home birth in Essex, states:
"This study compared 202 women who booked home births with a similar group of women booked for hospital births. The hospital group had more episiotomies, second-degree tears, and more babies in the hospital group were in poor condition at birth (Apgar 7 or below). No deaths occurred in either group. The induction rate was 8% in the home group and 19% in the hospital group; it seems reasonable to assume that these women all transferred to hospital for induction. Presumably the lower induction rate before onset of labour could reflect more opposition to induction among women booking a home birth, and less pressure for induction from midwives.
The results of this study showed no evidence of an increased risk associated with home confinements but indicated that there were fewer problems than were encountered in the deliveries in mothers confined in hospital."
More episiotomies, more inductions, more second degree tears, more poor apgar scores. These are facts, based on the evidence. There's another study based at the Whittington in London, about homebirths round there, which found, amongst other things, that whilst more first time mothers did transfer into hospital, many gave birth at home, with little or no intervention - I would be interested to see how many first time mothers do this in hospital.
The full list of all the research articles on the site I found are http://www.homebirth.org.uk/ here, under the Research heading. I have not read them all - I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet and at 8.53am and caffeineless, it was beyond me, I'm afraid.