Record NHS debts have plunged maternity services into "crisis", with job cuts denying mothers decent care, the leader of the UK's midwives said today.

The warning from the general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, Dame Karlene Davis, came after the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, admitted that it would be very difficult to meet the government target to provide expectant mothers with one-to-one maternity care.

In her speech to the college's annual conference in Torquay, Dame Karlene said it was a "tragedy" that staff and funding cuts meant women were being denied the choice to have their babies at home and could not be cared for by the same midwife throughout their pregnancy and labour.

She disputed claims by the prime minister and the health secretary that these problems were "challenges", contending that they amounted to a crisis for maternity care.

Dame Karlene said: "The government would have you believe there is no crisis, that funding difficulties are a storm in a teacup. Well, Mr Blair, midwives face redundancy, staffing establishments are being cut and recruitment to vacant posts frozen.

"As a result, maternity units cannot deliver one-to-one care for women throughout their pregnancy. You might call this a challenge; I'd call it a crisis.

"Birth centres closing or under threat, home births cancelled and services centralised: this is denying women choice over the type of maternity care they receive. This is not a challenge Mr Blair, it is a tragedy."

The health secretary earlier told the conference that the government's aim of providing all expectant mothers with one-to-one maternity care was "a very long way" off.

Ms Hewitt said the debts faced by some NHS trusts would make it even harder to meet the target by early 2010 as pledged.

In her conference speech, the minister said: "I know from talking to many midwives that we are a very long way from giving [one-on-one care] to every woman at the moment and the financial difficulties, of course, are making it even tougher in the year ahead."

While the health secretary did not receive a repeat of the barracking she got from nurses at their annual conference a fortnight ago, midwives in the audience told her that staff cuts by debt-ridden NHS trusts were making the government's pledge to provide every expectant mother with a midwife to look after them throughout their pregnancy unachievable.

One consultant midwife from Yorkshire said all midwives shared the government's vision of providing one-to-one care. But she added: "What is the government going to do to achieve this? In our trusts we are being told cutbacks, cutbacks, cutbacks."

The midwife won applause as she said the government seemed unable to help when trusts did not see midwifery as a priority.