Three student midwives, who were refused paid maternity leave when they had their babies, lost their sex discrimination claim against the government yesterday.

Clare Fletcher, Tracey Parkes and Shelley Wilkinson took the health secretary, John Reid, to an employment tribunal to contest rules which stop payments to student midwives under the Department of Health's annual bursary scheme if they take time off to have a baby.

But the central London tribunal ruled that as trainees they were not protected by European directives aimed at working mothers. The tribunal was highly critical of the bursary scheme, which allows for 60 days of sick leave but stops payments if a student takes maternity leave.

The tribunal said that before the midwife training scheme was made more academic in 2000, trainees were considered as employees with maternity rights.

It said: "It is odd that the result of enhancing the academic rigour of midwife training has been that their maternity rights have gone backwards in recent years.

"It is uncomfortable that, in the sensitive context of hospital wards caring for mothers and babies, there is now an absence of a protective regime of maternity leave and maternity pay from trainee midwives on the diploma programme, and their babies."

Last month the tribunal heard Mrs Fletcher, aged 40, from south London, describe the "financial struggle" she and her husband, Anthony, had after she took maternity leave for the birth of her second child, Gabriel, who was born in March 2002.

The tribunal also heard from Mrs Parkes, also 40, from Gosport, Hampshire, who was training as a midwife at Bournemouth University and at units in the Portsmouth NHS Trust. She was unable to take maternity leave when her second child, Hannah, was born in December 2002 because her husband earned only £10,500 a year.

Mrs Parkes, who has since been awarded an advanced diploma in midwifery with distinctions, made arrangements to work long hours into her pregnancy and after the birth. She told the tribunal she had had a caesarean section and had been "extremely tired" on returning to clinical placement work when her daughter was nine weeks old.

Mrs Wilkinson, 26, from Chesterfield, who is studying at Queen's medical centre, Nottingham and Nottingham University, lost out on bursary payments when she took maternity leave after the birth of her first child, Alec, in April 2002. The women's solicitor, Joanna Wade, said they were considering an appeal. "This raises a number of novel points on discrimination. There is no case law on maternity pay for trainees.

"We are relieved that the tribunal has recognised quite forcefully that, in policy terms, the situation is a mess."

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