Home births... and free births?

I'm enormously pleased by Patricia Hewitt's proposal to make home birth available to all women in Britain, as I've always wanted to give birth at home (when I get round to having children, of course). There's been some debate about the idea in the Guardian: here, here and here; and today G2 includes an article on free birth - giving birth not only at home, but without any medical attention and sometimes without anyone else present. There's a website dedicated to it here. Interesting, but terrifying, I think - certainly not something I'd be happy doing - but I suppose women gave birth for millennia with no doctor present...