Funding pressures on the NHS are forcing maternity wards to favour natural births over more costly caesareans, risking the lives of some mothers and babies, a senior coroner has warned.

Andrew Walker said there appeared to be a financial reason for favouring vaginal birth in the June 2015 delivery of Kristian Jaworski, whose mother pleaded for a caesarean after being advised to do so following difficulties with her first birth.

Tracey Taylor was eventually given an emergency caesarean, but the baby suffered fatal brain damage during a “prolonged and extended instrumental delivery” at North Middlesex University hospital. He died five days later.

Taylor said she repeatedly told medical staff she needed a caesarean because doctors had told her she had a narrow birth canal after her first son had to be delivered by forceps three and half years earlier.

“I don’t want anyone else to go through the same thing that I have,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “I feel I was treated like an overanxious woman who was just too frightened to give birth … I went in there with a reason [for a caesarean] that isn’t something a woman would just make up. I had been told I’ve got a narrow birth canal.”

She added: “I did highlight it and I did keep saying it to everyone, and my consultant, and I felt I wasn’t listened to.”

In a letter to the Department of Health warning of the risk of future deaths, Walker said there were likely to be financial reasons for denying the procedure, and that this justification “needed to be rebutted”.

Paul McNeil, who represented Taylor, said the inquest heard costs were a factor in the decision to avoid a caesarean.

“The coroner heard directly from the obstetricians and midwives, and indeed his expert gave evidence to the effect that cash is an important factor in whether a patient should have a vaginal [birth] or caesarean section,” he told Today. “He [the expert] indicated that the cost of a caesarean section was four times more than vaginal delivery.”

McNeil added: “I come across a large number of obstetricians and midwives in my work as a solicitor and anecdotally they say there is an enormous pressure to save costs and to avoid caesarean sections.”

North Middlesex University hospital has accepted liability for Kristian’s death, although it has stressed cost was not a consideration during his birth. Dr Cathy Cale, its director of medicine, said it was “very sorry for the tragic death”.

She added: “Although the coroner did not find the trust negligent, we have accepted liability for Kristian’s death because we accept we made mistakes.”

After an internal investigation, the hospital has drawn up new guidance on instrumental delivery and taken steps to ensure a mother’s concerns over delivery are recorded in her notes.

Cale said: “Our team took their decision to continue with the natural delivery in this case for clinical reasons alone and would have had no concerns about intervening surgically had they believed this risk was warranted. There was and never is any question of cost being a consideration.”

Louise Silverton, director for midwifery at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Money is a problem throughout the NHS and particularly in the maternity services. In a case like this all the way through pregnancy someone should have been asking Tracey why did you have a forceps [birth for her first child] and then they would have picked it up.”

She added: “I don’t think midwives think about the money. They think about trying to put the woman first. And when you have a woman who has anxieties, it is the role of the midwife to find out what those anxieties are and whether or not they can be allayed. And quite clearly in Tracey’s case these were real anxieties.”

Elizabeth Prochaska, a human rights lawyer who works with Birthrights, a charity established to improve women’s experience of childbirth, said the case highlighted what can happen when health professionals ignore the views of pregnant women.

She told Today: “When [pregnant women are] not listened to that’s when you end up with tragic cases like Kristian’s. Women are responsible for deciding what’s best for them and their babies.”

She said Kristian’s death suggested hospitals were failing to abide by a supreme court judgment in March 2015 on a similar case that ruled that it was for women to decide how they gave birth.

Citing the case, Prochaska said: “Lady Hale said that women needed to be treated as genuinely autonomous human beings capable of making their own decision in childbirth. And whenever there was a heightened risk of vaginal birth they should be offered a caesarean section. That decision has not filtered through it seems to the health care practitioners.”

Prochaska said cost constraints should not overrule the wishes of women. She said: “Caesarean sections are more expensive than vaginal births, not by any great order of magnitude, probably only a £1,000 or so. So it is no surprise that trusts, under increasing resource pressure, are rationing maternity services in this way. Nonetheless, every decision must be taken with regard to the individual, must be taken with regard to the circumstances of the woman, and that’s where things go wrong.”

Health minister Ben Gummer accepted that Kristian’s family had been let down “terribly” and that the NHS should learn from the tragedy. In a statement to the BBC, he said: “Treatment decisions in maternity care should always be made by clinicians in full consultation with women. These should be based on a woman’s individual clinical needs and in line with Nice guidelines in terms of best practice.

“It is vital that we learn from tragedies like this to ensure they are not repeated and far fewer families have to experience this kind of heartache.”