The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jackie Doyle-Price)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) on securing this debate on the important work of the national bereavement care pathway. It is only three years since he was elected to this House, but in that time, he has done more than simply putting this important issue on the political agenda. He has drawn considerable attention to it and really moved it forward, and I thank him most sincerely for that.
I also thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who has been a willing ally and partner in that work. We thank her for sharing her experiences, which I know must have been very painful. I am also grateful for the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who has applied her very considerable energy to this project. It is with pride that I stand alongside all these Members today to address this important subject which, as I have said, has really moved on in the past three years. I must also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), from whom I have inherited this part of my portfolio. He left it in very good shape, which makes it very much easier for me to address the House on it this evening.
I was fortunate enough to attend the launch of wave 2 of the pathway here in Parliament just last week, when I met the charities, led by Sands, that are working hard to expand the pathway, and representatives from the wave 1 and wave 2 permanent sites. That uplifting event celebrated the difference that the pathway is making to parents across the country, and I was pleased to hear about the positive evaluation of the wave 1 pilot sites since the pathway was launched last October. I was particularly moved to hear the story and experiences of Cheryl Gadsby. She really brought to life the huge difference that the right care can bring to bereaved parents. Against that background—
Jackie Doyle-Price
I am glad you did that then, Mr Speaker, because I was just getting to a good bit.
Although my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester said that he did not want to put me on the spot about further funding, he actually did—very effectively—so before I go any further this evening, I am pleased to announce that the Department of Health and Social Care will provide additional funding for Sands to further develop and roll out the national bereavement care pathway in the coming financial year. It is a shame that the House is not busier, because it is not often that Ministers get the chance to say such things from the Dispatch Box.
The Department has been in conversation with Sands and can confirm £106,000 of funding to support the roll-out of the pathway in 2018-19. That is more than double the Department’s original funding of £50,000 to support the first year of the programme. While I am sure that all Members present understand that funding for future years cannot be committed at present, I hope that the announcement of this funding demonstrates the Government’s commitment to supporting the pathway as it moves towards national roll-out. The funding comes following recognition of the great strides forward that the pathway project is making in ensuring that all bereaved are offered the right high-quality care at a time of enormous tragedy.
I should pause here, as I did at the parliamentary event last week, to highlight the Government’s wider ambitions for maternity care because, as we have heard this evening, the number of deaths at childbirth are too high. The Secretary of State’s ambition is to reduce rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries by 50% by 2025. Our even closer goal is to achieve a 20% reduction by 2020, which illustrates our desire to make rapid progress.
To that end, the Secretary of State launched a refreshed maternity strategy last year—not long after the moving debate on baby loss in the House last October. The strategy highlights further action that the Government and NHS England have taken to improve safety and reduce the number of stillbirths and other adverse maternity outcomes. The initiatives include funding for the new healthcare safety investigation branch to develop investigation standards and conduct independent investigations into all cases that meet the criteria of the “Each Baby Counts” programme run by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. That will amount to around 1,000 cases annually and will improve the rigour and quality of investigations into term stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and serious brain injuries, and of learning from the investigations. The investigations began this month and will be rolled out to all areas of England by this time next year. Other initiatives include more support for safety training for all maternity and neonatal staff and an ambition to reduce the national rate of pre-term births from 8% to 6%, building on the world-class expertise already available across the 35 pre- term birth clinics in England.
The Department of Health, together with the Health Departments in Scotland and Wales, has funded the development of a national standardised perinatal mortality review tool to support systematic, multidisciplinary reviews of the circumstances and care leading up to every stillbirth and neonatal death. The tool is now available and enables teams to provide clear and accurate information to parents about why their baby died. It will also help staff to understand where lessons can be learned and allow for future care to be improved.
I am happy to report that we are making progress towards achieving our 2020 ambitions. The stillbirth rate in England has fallen from 5.1 per 1,000 births in 2010 to 4.3 in 2016. The neonatal mortality rate was 2.7 deaths per 1,000 births in 2016, down from 2.9 in 2010, but we must continue to do all we can to ensure the best maternity care in this country and the most appropriate support if parents do suffer bereavement at birth.
We are committed to providing high-quality bereavement care, as I hope I have proved and demonstrated with my announcement this evening. Since 2010, the Government have invested £35 million in the NHS to improve birthing environments, including better bereavement rooms and quiet spaces, at nearly 40 hospitals. On 2 February 2018, the Secretary of State announced the Government’s intention to conduct a review of whether the law should be changed to allow parents to register a pregnancy loss that occurs at less than 24 weeks’ gestation, as many hon. Members have called for. The review will also look more broadly at what can be done to improve care and support for parents going through such losses.
It is crucial that parents who experience pregnancy loss, regardless of the gestation stage at which the loss occurs, receive the best possible care and support, and that we use all opportunities to learn for the future when things go wrong. The review will speak to parents, clinicians, midwives and other experts to develop recommendations to ensure that pregnancy losses before 24 weeks’ gestation are handled with the same sensitivity and care as losses at a later gestation.
The Department is also conducting a review of whether the law should be changed to enable or require coroners to investigate stillbirths. Currently, coroners have the power to investigate only if there is doubt as to whether a baby was stillborn or lived independently, regardless of whether doctors declared it a stillbirth. Some parents feel that a coroner’s investigation would help to provide answers when a baby is stillborn and that such learning could help to avoid similar tragedies in future. As part of that review, the Department is working with the Ministry of Justice to consult parents and experts about whether and, if so, how current legislation on coronial powers in relation to stillbirths should be amended to ensure that all avenues for investigating and learning from tragic events are considered.
Once again, I thank all Members of the House who have done so much to raise awareness of what can be done to support bereaved families through such tragedies. I am delighted to have been able to announce further funding for the national care bereavement pathway today, and I will closely follow its development as wave 2 of the pilot sites gets under way.
Question put and agreed to.