Baby Loss Awareness Week

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

20:02

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Baby Loss Awareness Week.

It is a privilege to open this debate again during Baby Loss Awareness Week. I want to start by recognising the bereaved parents participating in the debate today, whether by watching at home, having shared their story with their MP, or even by speaking in this Chamber. To lose a child is one of the most painful things a parent can experience. I know today will bring back difficult and deeply upsetting memories for many, but we are here today in our children’s memory.

Since our debate last October, the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss has heard from countless families, charities and support groups. They have trusted us with heartbreaking stories of babies who have died, concerns that were dismissed, parents left without answers and families having to fight the very systems that should have supported them. We have also heard from dedicated healthcare professionals, representative of tens of thousands across the country who are working incredibly hard to deliver great care despite the system, not because of it.

Last year I shared my experience of losing my daughter Mallorie. This year I have been spurred on by the stories that others have entrusted to us. Each is different, but the message running through them is the same. We know more than enough about the failures and the problems. We know what good should look like, and families and professionals now urgently need us to deliver change. To everyone who has spoken at the APPG, often at great personal cost, I say, “Thank you. Your testimony must not simply become part of another report; it must shape what happens next.”

When I opened last year’s debate, I focused on the national investigation into maternity and neonatal services. Since then, Baroness Amos has published her findings, and a national maternity and neonatal taskforce has begun developing a national action plan. That is progress, but it is not yet delivery. Time and again, families have seen inquiries established, reports published and recommendations accepted, only for the same failures to recur again and again. We must break this cycle, and make this national action plan a watershed moment. The test will not be the quality of the plan when it is published, but whether care improves, families are listened to, staff are supported to provide care and, ultimately, fewer babies die.

Today, I want to focus on some key areas in which action is urgently needed. First, to underpin the action plan, we need new national targets to reduce baby deaths and eliminate inequalities. Black and Asian babies continue to experience substantially higher rates of stillbirth and neonatal death, while babies born to the most deprived communities also face worse outcomes. We do not need another decade of evidence to know that this demands action.

The previous national maternity safety ambitions expired last year and have not yet been replaced, so the Sands and Tommy’s joint policy unit is calling for new targets to take us to 2035. These targets must be ambitious, transparent and measurable. The policy unit’s recommendations include national targets for stillbirth, neonatal mortality and preterm birth, alongside an explicit commitment to eliminating the inequalities in these outcomes based on ethnicity and deprivation.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his eloquent and moving speech, with lots of practical proposals. On maternity service failures, in April 2021, my constituents Phoebe and Jim Brooks tragically lost their much-wanted and loved son Jasper at Darent Valley hospital a few hours after he was born. The coroner’s report found there had been serious failings in his care, including a lack of resuscitation expertise on hand during the birth and premature withdrawal of neonatal care from Jasper. The family were sent to a bereavement room while Jasper was still alive. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that tragedies such as this indicate strongly that we must, as a matter of urgency, implement the recommendations of the Amos review, and then look at the need for a full statutory public inquiry into UK maternity safety?

[Andy MacNae]

Unfortunately, the tragic case my hon. Friend describes is just too common, as is reflected in so many accounts I have heard from families at our all-party group. Yet again, it just adds to the weight of evidence showing that we need urgent and immediate action. We cannot wait. We cannot let those families down.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has brought forward an incredibly important debate, which will allow many such stories, like the one we have just heard, to be shared. I want to share the story of my constituents whose son Jesse died in their arms just six days after he was born. His parents are now bravely campaigning for placental cord insertion to be routinely assessed as part of a 20-week scan to reduce preventable stillbirths and neonatal deaths. Will he take this opportunity to pay tribute, as I do, to the bravery of Jesse’s parents in launching this campaign?

[Andy MacNae]

I pay tribute to those parents, and to so many parents who have launched campaigns in their children’s names. I hope and believe that that particular measure will be considered alongside many other methods and actions that could prevent the tragedies we see all too often. I thank my hon. Friend for bringing that to our attention.

The national maternity targets are vital, because without these clear targets, it is harder to maintain focus, measure progress or hold the system to account. The Government should adopt this call. Progress must be published regularly, and the data must show not only the national picture, but which communities are being failed and where. We must understand where babies are dying, which families are experiencing the poorest outcomes, where learning is taking place and, ultimately, whether changes in policy are actually making a difference.

This must include better data on miscarriage. At present, we do not routinely collect the information needed to understand fully how many families experience miscarriage, how those experiences differ between communities and whether outcomes are improving.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for generously giving way. As he rightly says, the system is currently failing so many mothers, babies and families, and there is often a lack of care, support and compassion. Last year, my constituent Rachel suffered two devastating miscarriages, and she mentioned the insensitivity towards her of both the doctor, who asked why she was crying, and the midwife, who told her to calm down and have a glass of wine. Does the hon. Member agree with me that things such as guarantees for bereavement and perinatal mental health specialists in every maternity service are really important, and that we could strive for that?

[Andy MacNae]

I agree wholeheartedly, and as the hon. Member will see, I will focus on that significantly later in my speech.

On miscarriage data, Scotland is expecting to begin routine data collection on miscarriage from this year. England should match that ambition. Linked to that, we also need to address anomalies in how stillbirth is defined and recorded. However, targets and data are only meaningful if someone is responsible for monitoring progress and challenging failure.

That brings me to my second point. The maternity and neonatal commissioner, as recommended by Baroness Amos, must be independent, empowered and properly resourced. The commissioner could provide a strong national voice for women, babies and families, monitoring whether recommendations are implemented, holding the system to account and ultimately helping to rebuild trust. The commissioner should report regularly to Parliament on progress against national targets, identify where improvement has stalled and require public bodies to explain what corrective action they will take. That must include being able to challenge the regulators. Long-terms issues with the Care Quality Commission and the General Medical Council are well recognised, but effective, trusted and fit-for-purpose regulators are a crucial element of any maternity safety system and a maternity commissioner should be able to demand better of them.

The commissioner’s potential will be realised only if they can act independently of the system being scrutinised. The system cannot be allowed to mark its own homework. The commissioner should have a statutory basis, independent publication rights, the power to obtain information and make formal recommendations, and a duty to monitor their implementation. The office will also need protected funding and a dedicated team. The Government must explain how the commissioner will work alongside the taskforce and other bodies, what powers the office will possess and how its independence will be protected. That will be particularly important if the role is to be based within the Department of Health and Social Care. If that is the case, the Government should present a clear rationale as to why it is the best option and provide specific assurances around independence. Ultimately, families will judge the maternity commissioner role by whether it can ask difficult questions, publish uncomfortable findings and demand proof that change has occurred.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I was hoping the hon. Member would mention this point. When there is a tragedy, a loss, a heart aching and a family grieving a child they have lost, that really hurts. Does he, and ultimately the Government, feel that there should be access to a person of faith—perhaps a chaplain, a man or woman of the cloth—who could come forward to provide succour and support whenever they need it?

[Andy MacNae]

I think this connects to the issue of personalised care. When it comes to bereavement support, it is the care and support that works for that individual. I will talk later about personalised care plans and personalised support plans during bereavement, but it is about reflecting on what the individual needs, not what the system says someone needs.

[Dr Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. Does he agree that charitable organisations such as Sands—we have Suffolk Sands in my constituency and today the red pillar boxes throughout Bury St Edmunds are covered in crocheted hats that have come from Sands—and the peer group support they are able to make available is absolutely crucial to supporting families who have lost babies? There can be few families in the land who are not affected.

[Andy MacNae]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Sands—indeed, we are joined today by staff from Sands in the Gallery. There are so many charities, such as Tommy’s and others, that are vital. It is a fact that so many parents rely on voluntary services and voluntary support to get through what is one of the most difficult times in their lives. Those charities are indispensable, but at the same time they are often plugging gaps that exist in the system that maybe should be providing that support.

The third point I want to focus on is on the question about personalised family-centred care. Every pregnancy and every family is different. Good care depends on seeing the person in front of you, listening carefully, and understanding their history, circumstances, concerns and individual risks. Too many families have described being dismissed or treated as a category rather than as a person. A safe service cannot be one in which parents are not heard. Nor can it be called safe if assumptions about ethnicity or background influence the care someone receives.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

I am here to represent the views of my constituents John and Holly Osman. Holly and John lost two babies and have had a catastrophic history, but that has driven Holly to work in this area. She asked me to point out that the NHS maternity survey says that 18% of parents reported that their concerns during labour and birth were not taken seriously. The hon. Gentleman has already referred to Sands and Tommy’s. I wondered whether he had some ideas about whether it would be right for staff to ensure that the concerns of parents are listened to and acted on. Does he agree?

[Andy MacNae]

I thank John and Holly for raising that question. Of course, I agree that listening to parents, listening to families and listening to mothers is crucial to a good service. To me, it is the thing that defines a good service: the personalisation and individualisation of care.

Building on that, families must be genuinely involved in decisions. Information must be clear and accessible. Risk must be assessed individually. When a mother or parent says that something is wrong, that concern must be taken seriously. The national action plan should establish what every family is entitled to expect throughout the maternity and neonatal pathway: physical and psychological safety, dignity, informed choice, and compassionate care and communication.

In designing this change, we should recognise that there are midwives, doctors, nurses, support workers and bereavement specialists throughout the country delivering extraordinary care every day, often under immense pressure. We must learn from that and build on it. To give just one local example, we have the Lancashire Women and Newborn Centre in Burnley. Speaking with staff and patients there, we can see what good practice looks like. It is a high-quality environment, with a triage unit to catch early issues. There is mutual respect among staff and personalised care for patients. They take time to listen and to provide compassionate bereavement support when needed. This same high standard of care is replicated in many units throughout the country, so reform must not simply identify what has gone wrong. We must recognise, celebrate and share what works. We must have structures that identify best practice and effectively propagate it throughout maternity services.

That brings me to my fourth point. Supporting and empowering staff must be central to reform. Throughout the all-party parliamentary group’s work, we have heard from healthcare professionals who care deeply about families and take great pride in their work, but goodwill cannot compensate for a lack of time, training, capacity or appropriate facilities. Safe care requires the right staff with the right mix of skills and the right resources and facilities needed to deliver it. Staff need time to listen properly to families, undertake training, reflect on difficult cases and learn from colleagues.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for leading the debate so admirably. One thing we heard at the APPG on patient safety is the need for staff to feel confident to speak out if they see things going wrong and the importance of a safe culture, yet in the NHS staff survey only four in 10 midwives say that their organisation would address concerns if they were raised. Does he agree that we need to do more to build a safe staff culture within the NHS and maternity units?

[Andy MacNae]

I fully agree. I am so glad my hon. Friend raised that point, because she has, wonderfully, set up the next passage of my speech. Staff must be able to raise concerns without fearing damage to their careers. The figure in the NHS staff survey is, I believe, that 43.5% of midwifery staff felt confident that concerns would be addressed. Staff are often the first to recognise when a system is becoming unsafe. If they believe speaking up will make no difference, an opportunity to prevent harm may be lost.

Improving culture must therefore mean more than asking staff to attend another programme or complete another exercise. It must mean creating an environment with time to listen and time to care. Speaking up should be welcomed, concerns taken seriously and those who raise them protected. Boards and senior leaders must hear what staff are telling them. They must be able to trace concerns from the ward to the boardroom, demonstrate what action has been taken and report back to those who spoke up. Whistleblowers must be protected from retaliation or isolation. No healthcare professional should be forced to choose between remaining silent about unsafe care and risking their livelihood by raising it. If staff are trusted, supported and heard, they are far better placed to listen to families in turn. Fundamentally, we should empower staff to provide the standard of care they entered the NHS to deliver.

Finally, we must deliver compassionate and equitable bereavement care. Our daughter Mallorie died at five days old. Nothing could have been done to prevent that, and we received exceptional care throughout our time in hospital. We also received good emotional support in the immediate aftermath from hospital staff, but trauma can take time to kick in. The impacts of losing a child do not end after a week or a month or a year. They stay with us. My wife, Vanessa, suffered depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in the years following Mallorie’s death. For 11 years now, she has had consistent difficulties accessing specialist and sustained mental health support. Instead, she has been bounced between short-term interventions and generalists, and often reliant on limited voluntary services. At no point was she able to get support from a mental health professional who actually specialised in birth trauma. She was never able to return to her role as a senior health visitor. She has now had her NHS career terminated on ill health grounds and she is back on another waiting list for therapy.

Vanessa’s experience is far from unique. Time and again, I have heard from mothers and fathers about how the system was incapable of responding to their individual circumstance, and the timing and depth of trauma.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

I refer to a case from my constituency surgery. I have heard that for mothers who suffer from bipolar, the birth process is very triggering, and support is rarely available at that point—a critical point in their lives. What needs to be provided for those patients?

[Andy MacNae]

I will come on to the full package of support that is needed, but what the hon. Member raises is indicative of how care is not available when people need it most—we hear that time and again.

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is incredibly generous in giving way and is making an excellent speech. When there is a gap with therapeutic care, there are charities, such as the Lily Mae Foundation in my constituency, that fill it. We have also talked about Sands and Tommy’s—there are lots of charities out there that need support as they do that important work. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should consider more support for them as well?

[Andy MacNae]

Supporting charities is vital; they do so much incredible and brilliant work, and I would encourage any support that could be given. I will now attempt wrapping up and not take any more interventions —my eye has been caught by Madam Deputy Speaker.

The care received after losing a baby stays with a family forever. Kindness, dignity and privacy cannot remove grief, but poor and absent care after loss will deepen trauma and cause long-term harm. To be clear, good bereavement support must include fathers. Only 29% of services offered basic assessments to fathers in 2024—that is simply not good enough. Services must recognise that fathers and partners will also grieve.

We need to do better, and we can. We know what needs to be done. The national bereavement care pathway already exists and covers miscarriage, termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly, stillbirth, neonatal death and sudden unexpected death in infancy. Every NHS trust in England has voluntarily adopted it, but implementation remains inconsistent because services have not always received the resources or prioritisation needed to deliver it. We must address that and require that all bereavement pathways are considered within NHS planning and resourcing.

Effective bereavement support should be integral to all maternity services, with identified bereavement leads. All staff who may care for bereaved families should have access to appropriate bereavement training during working hours, and they must themselves receive the support they need in dealing with the losses they have seen. When loss has occurred, every family should have a private space to spend time with their baby, make memories and begin to process what has happened. Specialist bereavement support services should be there to support them through personalised support plans, and in the longer term they need to have specialist mental health support available to respond as trauma manifests, even if that is years later.

The question is no longer whether maternity and neonatal services require fundamental change—report after report has answered that. The question is whether we have the determination to deliver it. We need targets to reduce baby deaths and eliminate inequalities by 2035, supported by good data to show that policy is working. We need a commissioner with the independence and authority to hold the system to account. We need care that sees and listens to every family as individuals. We need to give staff the training, time, capacity and protection they need to provide safe care and to speak up when something is wrong. And when a baby dies, we need compassionate, high-quality bereavement care for every family.

Last year, I said that we had the opportunity and obligation to act. That obligation is now greater, because the actions we must take have been laid before us. Families have heard promises before, they have watched recommendations accepted, and they have been assured that lessons would be learned, only to see another family experience the same failures. We owe them something different now, not another expression of good intent, but evidence that care is changing and lives are being saved.

Bereaved families have given us their testimony, time and trust. They should not be asked to return in another year—or in another decade—to tell us that the same failures continue. We cannot bring back the babies who have died, but we can honour their short lives through what we do next.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Members will know that there is protected time, so we have until 11.02 pm, but it would be helpful if they could keep their remarks to seven or eight minutes.

20:23

[Sir Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for that excellent opening speech. I also thank him and the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for co-sponsoring the debate with me.

Most of all, however, I thank the parents who have lost children, and who took me on a journey on this issue when I was Health Secretary. I am thinking of James Titcombe, who lost his son Joshua at Morecambe Bay; of Carl Hendrickson, who lost his wife Nittaya and his son Chester at Morecambe Bay; of Richard Stanton and Rhiannon Davies, who lost their daughter Kate at Shrewsbury and Telford; of Derek Richford, who lost his grandson Harry at East Kent. They, and many others, are watching this debate and can see that the Health Secretary is here. I thank her for being here for this Backbench Business debate; it means an awful lot, and I know that she cares about the issue.

I start by recognising that some progress has been made. Since I first stood at the Dispatch Box in 2014 with the Morecambe Bay inquiry, which was the first of many maternity safety inquiries, the neonatal deathrate has fallen by 21%—about 700 fewer deaths a year—but that is not good enough. The fall in death rates plateaued in 2020 and has not got much better, and since then we have had a worrying rise in maternal deaths. The 2025 target to halve neonatal deaths that I set in 2017 was missed.

There are three problems behind our lack of progress. First—and this is something for which I am partially responsible—there are too many recommendations. Earlier this year, Baroness Amos counted 748 maternity safety recommendations, mainly since 2015. The NHS is a world champion at doing reports into maternity safety, but sadly not a world champion at implementing the recommendations made.

It is encouraging that the Health Secretary says that there will be a recommendations hub, but could she give it real teeth, so that there is a timescale within which the NHS will decide if it is going to adopt a recommendation and, if it is going to, a person responsible for implementing it within the vast labyrinth that is the NHS? Could she give a timescale so that we and our constituents all know that something really is going to happen?

[Jim Shannon]

I know the right hon. Gentleman will be aware of the research that suggests that giving women access to specialised care after their first miscarriage can help prevent baby loss. Currently, specialist care is only offered after three miscarriages. It is estimated that supporting early intervention could prevent around 10,000 baby losses a year—that is one thing that could be done right now.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and his point closely links to the second of my three reasons, which is that we have still not, after all this time, implemented proper continuity of care. That should mean that every mother, from the moment she is told that she is pregnant, is assigned one team of doctors and midwives to be with her throughout pregnancy, birth and even after the birth. Clinical teams that know their patients are much more likely to identify risk when it happens and to avoid tragedies. That lack of continuity of care sits behind the feeling that we heard about in the speech by the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen: parents saying time after time that they feel forgotten in the system.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

We hear quite often when women have high-risk pregnancies, “Don’t worry, contingency care is there.” I had placenta accreta last year, which is one of the few pregnancy conditions that still kill women in birth. I remember turning up for scans, having been told there was an 11% chance that I might die on the day I gave birth, and the high-risk team saying, “So it’s just a normal pregnancy, right? Everything’s going really great. We will get this done really quickly, find out how things are.” That is the lack of care taken with women who are carrying everything that matters at that time. Many people say, “Don’t worry, high-risk is fine. It is dealt with really well; it is only standard pregnancies” but I want to stress the point that there is still a comprehensive issue.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very powerful personal experience. I am concerned about this idea of women being moved from having no team to a high-risk team, because it cannot always be known in advance if someone is high risk. It is knowing every woman’s situation continuously that enables a team to understand whether she is deteriorating and whether, therefore, she is in need of specialist help.

The third reason we still have this problem after all this time is the one I really want to focus on: the ideological obsession that still exists in some parts of the NHS with so-called natural or normal birth. That leads to the promotion of vaginal birth over and above C-sections in a way that, all too often, sees interventions and escalations happen too late, and mothers and babies die.

I do not ask the House to take my word for it, as some of the reports have commented on this issue. Bill Kirkup, who did the Morecambe Bay report, said that maternity services at Furness general hospital

“became strongly influenced by a small number of dominant individuals whose over-zealous pursuit of the natural childbirth approach led at times to inappropriate and unsafe care.”

Donna Ockenden told the Select Committee about Shrewsbury and Telford:

“We have spoken to hundreds of women who said to us that they felt pressured to have a normal birth. My clinical team said they have seen examples, even in situations where a normal birth in their own hospital would be contraindicated, of women being pressured”.

She said there was

“a multi-professional…focus on normal birth at pretty much any cost.”

Again, at the launch of the Nottingham inquiry, Donna Ockenden said there were hundreds of cases where

“the quest for normal birth continued. And avoidance of intervention persisted”.

Finally, in Leeds, Fiona Winser-Ramm told The Times she was convinced that “normal birth” ideology played a part in the death of her daughter, Aliona.

[Dr Prinsley]

I am very impressed to see both a former Health Secretary and the present Health Secretary here late in the evening for this debate, which is a sign of the subject’s importance.

Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that fundamental to the third problem he describes is the breakdown in relationships between the profession of midwifery and the profession of obstetrics, and that there is, in some instances, what appears to be a competition between these two crucial professions, and that one answer may be to find some way of getting the two professions closer together?

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I defer to the hon. Gentleman’s clinical experience, but I absolutely agree with him. He has hit the nail on the head.

Before I come on to my solutions, I want to say why I think this is still a problem. Very senior voices are still promoting “normal birth” ideology, including a former president of the Royal College of Midwives who told LBC in June:

“Doctors have taken over maternity, and they’re not doing it very well.”

It really is time to stop denying the problem and start solving it. Never again should the promotion of an ideology about a so-called preferable type of birth lead to a mother or baby being put at risk.

[Alicia Kearns]

I want to unite those points by drawing again on personal experience. My son reacted badly to being induced, and his heart rate stopped. We were rushed to the emergency room: “We have to get him out! We have to get him out!” Just before they cut, somebody screamed, “Stop! His heart rate has gone back to normal. He’s fine. You don’t need a C-section.”

Stood at the end of the bed were an obstetrician and a midwife, and the midwife said, “Great, you don’t need a C-section any more.” The surgeon said, “Yes, she does. She needs to have it now. She needs to have it.” They said to me, “You need to decide.” They refused to come to an agreement about what was safer for my baby, and they said that I had to make that decision.

That is exactly the problem, and my right hon. Friend is so brave to make the point, because he will come under criticism for saying that there is such a thing as an obsession with natural birth. A safe birth is the best birth, and I am thankful to him for his bravery in making that point tonight.

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her courage in talking about her personal experience, which says it better than I ever could.

That leads me to my conclusion and what I think are the solutions. First, bringing together the points made by my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley), we need a total overhaul of midwifery education to make it clear that there has to be teamwork around every birth. It is not midwives versus doctors; it is midwives and doctors working together for the safe delivery of every single child.

Secondly, we need a shared agreement across both professions about what risk is, and about when escalation is required—total agreement about the moment for intervention—so that something such as my hon. Friend describes never happens again.

Finally, we need to rehumanise the whole process through which the NHS takes care of pregnant mothers and newly born babies so that from the moment of pregnancy, every mother is assigned one team of doctors and midwives who are responsible for that mother and child right the way through pregnancy and after birth. No one should ever be turned into a number or a type of care. Everyone is a human being and should always treated that way by the NHS.

This week we are here to remember the babies and mothers who should be here but are not. We recognise the progress that has been made in their name, but we also have a duty to the families to be humble about the failures as well.

20:35

[Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)]

I want to start by thanking the Secretary of State for making maternity and neonatal safety a priority and for publicly stating that as her priority from the outset. Personally, it felt like a relief, especially after the uncertainty there has been. I wish to personally thank her for that.

Baby Loss Awareness Week is a time to remember the babies we have lost, stand alongside bereaved families and recognise that pregnancy and baby loss can change a life forever. Behind every case discussed in this House is a baby who is loved, a family who imagined a future, and a life that will always be part of theirs. In preparing for this debate I watched last year’s debate again, and what saddened me was how much of what we raised then remains painfully familiar today—families still fighting for answers, women still describing concerns that were dismissed, staff still frightened to speak up.

Last year I said that grief must be the engine for change. Today I want to go further. Families have carried the grief. It is time that the system carried the responsibility.

There has been an important change over the past year. Baby loss, maternity safety and neonatal care are being discussed openly and treated as Government priorities. The work of Donna Ockenden, Baroness Amos and Lady Justice Thirlwall has brought devastating failings into sharp focus. I thank them, their teams and, above all, the families whose courage made that work possible.

For the last six-and-a-half years I have fought for change and listened to over 1,000 families and organisations, my own experience of miscarriages and birth leaving me with both physical and mental scars. I am so proud to serve as the Government’s national maternity and neonatal adviser and contribute to the national taskforce.

The taskforce brings together families, clinicians and others with the experience and expertise to shape reform. Bringing those voices together in this way is a significant step forward, and I welcome the determination to work together. I also wish to thank the civil servants working behind the scenes, often to demanding deadlines, to turn that determination into action.

The measure of our success will be what changes for women arriving at hospital frightened, the midwife trying to keep them safe and the families who sadly leave without their baby. Our goal must be clear: safe care, informed choice and compassionate births, with support that continues when things go wrong. That must be the standard that every family can expect.

That includes families experiencing early pregnancy loss. We must never confuse an early loss with a small loss. A woman may have known she was pregnant for only a short time. She may have already imagined a name, a face, a future. She may be grieving privately before she has told anyone that she is pregnant. Whatever her circumstances, she deserves compassion.

We must think about where care takes place. A woman who has just been told that her pregnancy ended should not have to sit beside someone celebrating a reassuring scan. A woman losing her baby should not be placed on a ward where she must listen to other babies crying and families celebrating their arrival. We should not ask people to endure avoidable distress because the service has failed to consider their needs. We need appropriate private spaces, timely assessment and scans, sensitive explanations and clear information about what happens next.

Women need to understand their treatment choices. They need pain relief, follow-up and someone to contact when they are frightened or unsure. Partners need support too. A woman should never be left feeling that because miscarriage happens relatively often, her own loss somehow matters less. The care we provide cannot remove that grief, but it can make the difference between being supported through it and being traumatised further.

That brings me to something very simple: time to care. In Nottinghamshire, when someone is struggling we often say, “Come on, let’s have a cuppa.” We put the kettle on and make a brew, but what we really mean is, “Stop for a moment. Take a breath and sit down. I’m here and I’m listening.” In maternity care, time matters: time to hear a woman say something feels wrong, time to explain a scan result, time to answer a father’s question and time to sit with parents after devastating news. A hurried conversation can leave someone frightened and confused. A compassionate conversation can help them understand, feel heard and know what support is available.

We cannot ask staff to provide that care while giving them neither the time nor the staffing to do it. Time to care must be built into the service. That means a properly funded, ring-fenced perinatal workforce plan and enough midwives, obstetricians, neonatal staff, sonographers and bereavement specialists with the training and support they need. It means continuity whenever possible so that women are supported by professionals who understand their history, their fears and their circumstances. Compassion must be supported by the way in which we organise and resource care. Listening must also lead to the right action. We need timely access to the right scans, skilled interpretation of the results and prompt referral when concerns are identified. Safe, informed choice depends on having that information and the opportunity to discuss it.

We must also confront the inequalities in whose concerns are heard. Black, Asian and ethnic minority mothers continue to face an unacceptable disparity in maternal outcomes. Racism, assumptions about pain and failures to listen must be addressed directly. We need services that take women’s symptoms seriously, provide appropriate interpretation and examine outcomes honestly. A national improvement in safety cannot be judged a success while some women remain much less safe than others. Where you live, the colour of your skin and your ability to make yourself heard must never determine whether you receive compassionate, safe care.

It would be an omission on my part if I did not speak about responsibility and accountability, because I know how deeply this hurts in Nottinghamshire. Women were left traumatised. Families described fathers sleeping on windowsills only hours after their precious baby had died because there was not even a chair available. Some of those who held senior responsibility during those years did not engage with Donna Ockenden’s review. For families who have revisited the worst moments of their lives to help establish the truth, that refusal hurts. It runs deep. It stings. Families have answered the difficult questions. They have shared intimate details. They have found the strength to speak when speaking has cost them so much. They deserve answers from those who held responsibility.

For far too long, we have had a system in which excellent midwives are frightened to speak up and families must fight for answers—and some explanations they have been given are clearly untrue. Women have been made to feel that what happened was their fault. We have to address that.

A culture that supports honest learning must protect staff who raise concerns and distinguish between human error and reckless or dishonest conduct. It must also ensure that failures of leadership have consequences. Protecting staff who speak the truth and holding people accountable for concealing it are both essential to safer care. That is why the maternity and neonatal commissioner must have teeth. The commissioner must have the independence, authority and resources to listen to families and staff, identify patterns, obtain information and challenge failures. There must be clear routes to require a response and escalate concerns when organisations fail to act. Families should not have to wait for another major inquiry before someone in authority listens. National oversight must be matched by accountability in every trust. Every trust board should be able to say who is responsible for maternity safety, what concerns have been raised, what action is being taken and how progress will be demonstrated. Improvement plans should have named owners, deadlines and evidence that care has changed and improved.

We also need consistent national data that helps us identify warning signs early, and accountability must reach the ward, the boardroom and the organisations overseeing them. We must therefore review our regulatory bodies and how they are fulfilling their purpose. The GMC, the CQC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council have different responsibilities, but all have a role in protecting patients. We need to examine how they respond to concerns, share information and act when warning signs emerge. We have those three regulators, yet families still need large-scale investigations to establish what happened and secure change.

The question is simple: how could serious concerns at Nottingham University hospital trust have persisted for over 20 years while bereaved families had to stand up, organise and fight before meaningful change began? That is a broken system. A system that leaves grieving parents to expose its failures is unfit for purpose, and when it forces those parents to fight for the truth while carrying the loss of their baby, it is cruel. We should call out that cruelty. We should reject it, and we should change it. Bereaved parents should never have to become the safety net for a system that failed their children.

I know that there are exceptional midwives and obstetricians working every day across this country. They listen, they care, they save lives and many have themselves fought to raise concerns. They too deserve a system that supports them, protects them when they speak up and acts on what they say. It is for those staff, for the future of our services and, above all, for babies, mothers and families that we must make change happen. I welcome the Health Bill’s proposal to extend the time limit for bringing relevant prosecutions from three years to five, but we must go further. Families facing bereavement can spend months simply trying to survive, and understanding a complex regulatory system should not fall entirely on them. They need clear information about where to raise concerns, what each organisation can do and how to access support.

[Anna Dixon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her amazing work on this issue over many years, campaigning for families in her area who have been harmed. Families often face long and lonely legal battles after the grieving and damage that has been done during the child’s care. Clinicians and organisations can often become defensive and risk-averse, particularly in this environment. Does she agree that, as part of the changes she is calling for, we also need to look at NHS Resolution, the clinical negligence scheme, and stop making it a fight for parents to get answers to their questions?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. This is a very powerful debate, but it is limited to three hours. I will not be able to get all the Members in if speeches are long, but I appreciate the sensitivity.

[Michelle Welsh]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

Bereavement care also needs proper scrutiny. A poster on a wall cannot demonstrate that a family has received compassionate care. Families need appropriate spaces, trained staff, sensitive communication and support after they leave hospital. Where families wish, equipment such as cuddle cots can allow them precious times with their baby. Parents should be supported to make their own choices about holding their baby, creating memories and saying goodbye. Nobody should be rushed, and nobody should be made to feel there is a correct way to grieve. The quality of that care should never depend on which hospital door a family walks through.

I also want to raise the No Breath Required campaign. In England and Wales, coroners generally cannot investigate a stillbirth. Their jurisdiction depends on whether a baby was born showing signs of life. That distinction can leave families in very similar circumstances with different routes to independent scrutiny. The need for answers does not disappear because a baby was stillborn. We should give coroners the power to investigate stillbirths, with appropriate safeguards, expertise and resources. We have seen the harm caused when inadequate reviews fail to identify what went wrong or prevent it from happening again. An extension of coroners’ powers must sit within wider reform, with sufficient capacity, specialist understanding and compassionate support for families.

We must also recognise that some losses occur despite good care. Every family deserves an honest explanation, support and the opportunity to ask questions, and that support must continue beyond discharge. Grief does not end when a hospital episode closes; it follows people home into work, relationships and, sometimes, subsequent pregnancy. Families must have access to bereavement and mental health support for as long as they need it. They should not have to prove that they are struggling badly enough to deserve help.

Bereaved and harmed families have already given us so much. Their testimony has exposed failures, their persistence has driven reviews and their determination has brought us to this point. They should never have needed to become campaigners to make the system listen. As the Government and the taskforce move forward, those families’ voices must remain central, and our promises must be tested against their experience. We need time to care, power to act and responsibility to answer.

Last year I said, “Let grief be the engine of change.” This year, we must show families where that change is happening. Families have carried the grief; it is time that the system carried the responsibility. Baby Wynter, baby Harriet, baby Sebastian, baby Koupar, baby Teddy, baby Quinn, baby Aubrey, baby Grace, baby Poppy, baby Dexter, baby Luna and baby Ladybird—we must remember every baby, support every family, and do everything in our power to prevent avoidable loss.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. We now have a speaking limit of seven minutes.

20:53

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), for their advocacy for better maternity care and for their opening speeches.

I want to begin by talking about an extraordinary woman, my constituent Jane Plumb, from Haywards Heath, and her son Oliver, and the work that they have done with their colleagues in running a charity called Group B Strep Support. They visited Parliament in the summer, and some hon. Members came along to learn more about their campaign, which calls for all expectant mothers to be offered GBS-specific tests late in pregnancy as part of their antenatal care. If that test were offered, more babies could be protected from a life-threatening infection.

I spent some time this afternoon looking at the Group B Strep Support website, and found the history of the charity. I knew that Jane set up the charity after her baby, Theo, died from the infection, and that she had been working on it for decades since then. The first time I saw a photograph of her at Parliament was outside this building with David Cameron; then, a few years later, she met my predecessor, Sir Nicholas Soames, and Theresa May, again while campaigning. That gives hon. Members a sense of the decades that she has put into fighting for babies not to have the same outcome as baby Theo.

The second set of constituents I want to reflect on are the families in Mid Sussex who are part of the Truth for Our Babies campaign. Since last year’s debate to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, progress has been made for the families in Sussex who lost their babies, the families whose babies were harmed and the mums who were harmed themselves. In last October’s debate, I called for the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), to listen to the calls from those families and the Truth for Our Babies campaign. Their ask was quite clear: an independent review into maternity services at the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust led, critically, by Donna Ockenden. It was not until April, six months later, that their requests were met.

In the intervening months, the meetings that those families convened with the right hon. Member for Ilford North were raw, emotional and stark. They are meetings I will not forget. I wish the bereaved parents from Truth for Our Babies had not been put in the position where they felt they had no choice but to lay out their babies’ stories again and again in order to be heard.

As so many hon. Members can attest, the distress, pain and exhaustion felt by parents and families tragically stretches on beyond the loss of the baby. It is right and proper that these families receive reviews to better understand what went wrong and to stop things going wrong in the future. I am of course glad that the Sussex maternity review is now under way, but when I receive extremely concerning correspondence from my constituents, such as that which I will briefly go on to quote, I have serious doubts about the way in which reviews are being conducted.

My constituent tells me that

“there is currently no funding available to cover families’ travel expenses to review meetings and that no remuneration arrangements are in place for our time, expertise and emotional labour.”

My constituent rightly notes that this is

“particularly concerning given the review’s commitment to being inclusive and non-discriminatory.”

That is despite the fact that National Institute for Health and Care Research guidance is clear about the importance of properly resourcing public involvement. It recommends payment for public contributors’ time, skills and expertise, alongside reimbursement of reasonable expenses such as for travel. The guidance recognises that financial barriers can prevent people from participating and that appropriate payment and expenses are important to ensuring that involvement is accessible and inclusive.

If families cannot afford the cost of travel or to take time away from work or caring responsibilities, and if they repeatedly revisit traumatic experiences without appropriate recognition and support, the evidence gathered will inevitably be incomplete and potentially fuel the inequalities already in place. I hope that Department of Health and Social Care officials and the Secretary of State will reflect on that. I would be happy to engage with them further as a matter of urgency. I also ask the Secretary of State whether she will heed Group B Strep Support’s calls for screening to be put in place for all expectant women.

20:56

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

Every single baby loss is a tragedy of almost incomprehensible magnitude, but I welcome the Amos report commissioned by this Government, which I believe will prove to be a watershed moment for those families.

The report highlights that black, Asian and economically deprived families face significantly higher risks of death and complications in maternity and neonatal care. Babies of black and Asian ethnicity face higher rates of dying shortly after birth compared with white babies, and black mothers face up to a 40% higher risk of miscarriage than white mothers. For many of my constituents in Ealing Southall, which is one of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in the country, that brings an added level of risk when using maternity services.

I recently met a family from Southall who had lost their newborn shortly after birth. Mum and dad did not have good English, so their 13-year-old daughter had to translate for them and explain that they were being asked to agree to turn off their new baby’s life support machine. This 13-year-old girl then ended up standing in front of a judge, arguing on behalf of her family. She showed me the heartbreaking letter the judge sent her, explaining the decision to end life support—a decision which she and her parents still cannot accept or even understand.

We rightly focus on the parents when a child dies, but brothers and sisters are too often overlooked when it comes to support after a family bereavement. My 13-year-old constituent found that some of the medical professionals struggled to communicate with her about what had happened to her newborn baby sister. She told me that she felt there was not enough help available for her, both as a child experiencing the loss of a sibling and as a child carrying all the burden of communicating with officialdom on behalf of her family. No 13-year-old child should have to go through what my constituent experienced, so I welcome the Government’s commitment to more compassionate and individualised care for every bereaved family, but I hope that the Secretary of State will work on the design of this, to ensure that there are measures in place to support families for whom English is a second or even third language, and support for siblings who act as the family translator.

Every woman should feel safe and looked after in the NHS. It is important that all women are listened to, including black and Asian women. I welcome the new task and finish group on miscarriage and baby loss care, but I urge it to look closely at the way that black and Asian women often face double jeopardy when accessing maternity and neonatal services, and to find ways of removing this inequality once and for all.

21:00

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Members who secured this debate, and all the families who have, in their darkest moments, raised their voices so that we can support them and, it is to be hoped, prevent future tragedies. I welcome the Health Secretary’s promise to publish a national action plan, and I want to focus on a few issues that I hope will be reflected in it. The first follows on from the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt). We must stop pushing women towards a normal birth. When my friends tell me that they are pregnant, I say to them, “You need to have the confidence to challenge the NHS.” We are taught to say, “Thank you; of course, whatever you say.” This is the one time in life when we should say, “Why? Stop. What are the other options? I want a different opinion. I need some time.” We must teach women to listen to their body, and to trust what it says.

We cannot say there is no obsession with normal births. When I was pregnant with my second, the hospital forced me to go on a one-hour online course, to convince me to have a vaginal birth, though I had an emergency C-section previously. At the end of the course, the hospital asked all of us on it, “Which of you are now ready to accept that you should go for vaginal birth?”. All the women said that they were, apart from me. The hospital said, “Why won’t you say yes?”. I said, “Well, on slide 20-something, you said that it was x% safer for me and my baby to have a second C-section, so that’s what I want.” They said, “It does say that, but let’s go for a natural birth. You can do it!” This is an obsession, and we have to challenge it.

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady’s comments remind me of our family’s experience. We had a traumatic first birth, and the second birth was an elective C-section. That was the only game in town; that is for sure. We said to the registrar—I will never forget it—“Do you tell women about the clinical risks of a vaginal birth—the same clinical risks that you have talked to us about for half an hour? Do you give women and families that data, so that they can make an informed choice?”. The registrar said, “No one’s asked me that in my entire career.” That is the precise point that the hon. Lady is making, and I thank her for making it.

[Alicia Kearns]

I am afraid that I will be drawing on a lot of personal experiences, but I scrapped at least nine further examples. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The next thing I want to impress on the Health Secretary is that it should be mandatary to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, for babies before they are discharged, particularly if they have been in a neonatal intensive care unit. During most pregnancies, we study what to do if our baby needs CPR, but we all know, even if we have had a baby before, the difference between the pregnancy course and how things are once we have held that baby in our arms. It is so different.

I praise Addenbrooke’s hospital, because it forced my husband to do a CPR course before I was discharged, as my daughter had to go into NICU for a brief period. When we came home, only about two weeks after she had been born, and when she finally reached her due date, she suddenly stopped breathing. It happened out of nowhere. We were sitting in bed. I remember screaming for my husband, and I think of the poor person on the phone when we dialled 999. I am normally quite good in an emergency, but not then. I lost the plot. I was screaming down the phone, “My baby’s dying! My baby’s dying! You have to save her.” Because my husband had done that CPR course, he was able to save this tiny baby’s life; it took them too long to get an ambulance to us. Her temperature had fallen below 34°C by the time the ambulance arrived. He saved her life at a time when I could not. I was not in a place where I could save my baby. Yet we let people go home from hospital without being retaught CPR, once they know what it is to hold a baby. I genuinely believe that it would save so many lives if we did what Addenbrooke’s did and forced people to spend 20 minutes doing a CPR course before they went home.

The next issue I will touch on is maternal death, because as my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash said, the numbers are rising. The leading direct cause of maternal death in this country is blood clots, but no friend who is pregnant or has gone through a pregnancy will say that that is the No. 1 cause. Instead, they will talk about diabetes, bleeding out during birth and all sorts of other things. I have gone back and looked through all three of my NHS trust books—I kept mine, although people are not meant to keep them after birth, because the NHS does not like them having all that evidence that they could use if there were ever an issue—and there is nothing about blood clots. NHS staff do not provide education about blood clots to women when they are pregnant, yet they are the No. 1 cause of maternal death.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is responsible for guidance, which is meant to be republished every few years, on how to prevent, diagnose and treat blood clots, but it has not updated that guidance since 2015. That means midwives and obstetricians have had no updated guidelines on how to handle the most common cause of death in women in pregnancy and after birth. Reviews were missed in 2018, 2021 and 2024. I have started to fight with the college to get it to do something about this, but even now, it says that it will not get updated guidance out until at least 2027. How many more women will die before then? I have met representatives from Thrombosis UK, and there would be no negative outcome from giving all women anticoagulants throughout their pregnancy; it poses no risk to them.

Unfortunately, last year, I was one of the people affected by this. I have had a real few years of it. I went to the doctor and said, “There is something wrong me with me. My only symptom is a slight catch in my chest.” I was not grabbing my chest and screaming, like everyone else does. I was dismissed, sent home, and told that there was nothing wrong with me. A lady wrote to me and said that she went to the doctor three times, worried about blood clots. She knew there was something not right in her leg, but each time, she was told she just needed to do some yoga and get moving. On the fourth time, the blood clots were finally diagnosed. In my case, I went back to the doctor and said, “There is something really wrong.” Luckily, the doctor did a D-dimer test, and then rang me to say that I needed to go to Addenbrooke’s immediately. The doctors found five clots that had passed through my heart and into my lungs. I was lucky to be alive. Addenbrooke’s said that I clearly had an exceptional doctor. I am so grateful to Dr Laura Stephens for saving my life.

The average woman has no idea that blood clots are the No. 1 maternal killer. Some 25% of those deaths happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, during which women probably do not go to the doctor, because they have done a pregnancy test and know that they are pregnant. The Department of Health and Social Care needs to do a mass awareness campaign. GPs need to be aware of the risks, and obstetricians and midwives need to be taught about not just “normal” birth, but all births. Tomorrow is World Thrombosis Day. I am calling for maternal blood clot prevention to be a priority in the new national strategy, because we can prevent them; almost all deaths of women from blood clots could have been prevented.

It may seem odd, but I briefly want to talk about a real cruelty that has been inflicted on mothers. The former Prime Minister apologised for the horrendous forced adoption scandal that took place in this country, but some babies never left those mother-and-baby homes. ITV found that 200 infants from eight homes were buried in mass plots in 10 cemeteries across the UK. As part of this work, will the Health Secretary ensure that the Government force local authorities, churches and charities to open up their records? The mums who were forced into those cruel mother-and-baby centres, and then lost their baby or had a stillbirth, do not know to this day where their baby is buried, and the graves are unmarked.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her speech. Without giving too much away—my wife would not forgive me—some of the experiences that she has spoken about resonate with me, and remind me of the birth of my son a year ago. On historical forced adoption, I was on the Select Committee that discussed the issue, and I am proud that the previous Prime Minister gave that apology. I found it shocking that when those mothers tried to get the records about their children, they were treated appallingly. As the hon. Lady will be aware, one of them was a Parliamentary Private Secretary to a former Prime Minister, but she was treated like a child when she was asking for her own information. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is not acceptable and should not have been allowed to happen, and that there should be an apology?

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Our little ones must be very close in age; I hope that his is doing very well. The Prime Minister said, “We are sorry,” but opening up the records would show that we meant it. It would release those mothers from the shame that was forced on them, and allow them to finally find their baby, name them, and lay them to rest.

Often in this place, we talk about what should be done, or what we could do, so I will end very briefly on a positive note. We cannot undo a family’s heartache, or the loss that they will carry for all their lives, but what drives most of us to come here is a determination to stop the same thing happening to someone else. I made that promise to my best friend in 2022, when she lost her baby Siena at nine months. I took my promise and secured £1.8 million in funding from the then Conservative Health Secretary to roll out a new technology designed to reduce stillbirths and premature births. The Tommy’s app—or Siena app—is a clinical decision support tool that accurately assesses women’s chance of having a premature birth, or developing complications with the placenta that can lead to stillbirth, and it is proven that it is saving lives. The trial began in 2024 and is running in 26 NHS maternity units, involving 39,000 women a year.

My request to the Health Secretary is to roll out the app across every single hospital. We have proven that it works. It essentially gives midwives an artificial intelligence equivalent. It gives them all the information that they may not know or understand about someone because they come from a different heritage, have a different background or have a complicated medical history. This tool can save lives, and can save more families from the heartache that too many suffer.

We must do better. We are failing women on too many accounts. Almost all of us in this room can probably share a trauma, or a time when something went wrong in the NHS because we were not listened to, and we must do more. I thank everyone for their frankness, and for sharing their stories this evening, and I thank the Health Secretary for agreeing to meet me in a few days; I am really grateful.

21:09

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Wyre) (Lab)]

I have never spoken in a Baby Loss Awareness Week debate before, but that does not mean that I do not care. I watched last year’s debate on the television, and I see that many of the faces that were there last year are here this year.

For the benefit of those watching, if an MP is not here and you have asked them to be here, let me say that it can often be quite difficult to talk about issues on which you feel that you have skin in the game, and that is certainly the case for me. When my local hospital, the Royal Lancaster infirmary, invited me to the opening of the new bereavement suite in the maternity unit earlier this year, I found a reason not to go. That was not because I was not glad that the room was there, but because I never wanted to see the inside of it. Unfortunately, in June this year, I did get to see the inside of it—not as an MP cutting the ribbon, but as a grieving parent.

The thing about miscarriage is that when you leave hospital, you do not have anything, apart from maybe some leaflets from the Miscarriage Association. Today I want to talk about baby loss certificates, because they are one thing that we can have and hold when we have nothing else of our babies. I will keep this quite tight. I want to set out some real issues with baby loss certificates. I believe that we can make policy changes that could make the situation better for parents. The eligibility criteria for the certificates in England are far stricter than those in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, people are required to have experienced the loss in England, and to be living in England when they apply, whereas in Scotland and Northern Ireland, people can apply if they live there or lived there at the time of the loss. That variation creates an inconsistency in what is available to parents across the UK.

There is another issue with cross-border access to certificates. Since the English scheme was launched, I have been made aware by Sands that families with bereaved parents who live in Wales, but who experienced their loss in an English hospital, have found that they were not eligible for the certificates. The charity’s concern is that once the Welsh certificate scheme finally launches, if the verification criteria are the same as the English criteria, it would require the parents to both live in Wales and have experienced the loss in Wales, so some parents would fall between the cracks, and would never be eligible for a baby loss certificate under either scheme.

There is also an inconsistency when parents do not live in the same part of the UK. That issue was raised in the Scottish Parliament’s debate on baby loss last week by my partner, David Linden MSP. The issue stems from the verification process, which uses NHS numbers and postcodes to confirm eligibility. However, that results in a problem whereby my baby loss certificates just have my name on them, as the mother; there is a blank where the father’s name should be—not because he does not want to be on the certificate, but because the system says no, as his postcode is “wrong”. We cannot have both parents’ names on a baby loss certificate when they live in different parts of the United Kingdom. David raised that issue last week in the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Health Minister Maree Todd said that she would take that forward with the Department of Health and Social Care. My only ask today is that the Secretary of State receives that request warmly. While it is not typical for a family to live across different nations in the United Kingdom, I hope that the Secretary of State will perhaps even reach out to Ministers in all the nations of the United Kingdom to ensure that where that is the case, families are eligible for baby loss certificates. When you are walking out of a hospital and the only thing you wanted was your baby, but all you have is loss, having that certificate is something tangible to hold on to and offers a huge amount of comfort. This is a “computer says no” administrative error, and fixing it would offer a lot of comfort to many families.

21:14

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

It is at incredible moments like this that people across this House come together to share their testimony. I really want to thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for opening today’s debate, and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) —you absolutely broke my heart, but the strength you have shared is incredible. I know that so many people watching this debate will be absolutely moved and feel the power and strength of your testimony. Obviously, I am from Northern Ireland. We introduced baby loss certificates—it is a devolved matter for us—but I know that so many of my constituents will feel really seen by what the hon. Member has said. I encourage the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for England to do what we have done in Northern Ireland, because it has made such a difference.

I want to talk briefly about a number of charities in my constituency of Lagan Valley, including Zach’s Wish and the Little Forget Me Nots Trust. Northern Ireland is one of those parts of the world where we do some things really well, and other things not very well. The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) talked about the issue of forced adoption and mother and baby homes. Across the island of Ireland, we have a long and shameful heritage of a number of mass graves. That has really impacted women and families throughout the centuries, because they have never been able to get closure. The Northern Ireland Assembly is doing a big public health piece of work at the minute, trying to trace some of those babies to their mother, or maybe their brother, their sister or another family member. I pay tribute to my colleague in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Nuala McAllister—MLA for North Belfast—who has been incredible in trying to bring churches to deal with their shame for not allowing families to have a burial, or even just an acknowledgment of their loved one.

Another huge issue that I feel is yet to be named in this debate is that of maternal mental health. Whenever you experience baby loss, no one can name that for you and tell you how to feel or what to do, but I do know that for women who have experienced that incredible, crushing hollow in the centre of their stomach, sometimes the one thing they need is somebody to be there. Other Members have touched on the fact that there needs to be continuity of care throughout a pregnancy, which includes whenever that journey comes to an end and the person does not have a baby in their arms.

I want to pay tribute to one of my constituents, Lynette Glen from Lagan Valley, and the maternal advocacy and support project at the Atlas Women’s Centre. I do not want to betray any confidences, but I know that one of the women involved in another project with Women’s Aid lost her daughter after she gave birth, and in Northern Ireland, shamefully, we still do not have a proper programme for women who are experiencing post-natal depression and anxiety, or issues during the pregnancy. That is deeply troubling—I cannot even begin to imagine how much it compounds the loss of a child when you were already potentially in deep distress.

Another issue that we have come across in Northern Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom is the lack of paediatric pathology services. We now have a situation where babies are being taken from Northern Ireland to other parts of the UK. Earlier this year, I met representatives of some of the pathology departments at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. That team is second to none, but that does not mean that it is not going to hurt mums, dads and other people who have lost their baby when their baby is taken away from them. That is really difficult, but we have a staff shortage across the pathologist workforce, which is incredibly difficult. As we think our way through this issue, we need to give thought to how we are going to help families who are undergoing that loss.

Earlier this year, we experienced the passage of the Hillsborough law, and so many people have already made reference to the Ockenden report, which is important in terms of the culture, sometimes, of secrecy and cover-up and is key whenever we are discussing baby loss. I am so heartened by the number of MPs who are already doing incredible work in this space, but we need to do so much more. Northern Ireland currently has the highest infant mortality rate in the UK, and I am sure that many people will find that as troubling as I do.

I pay tribute to a charity called Mummy’s Star, founded by a lovely man called Pete, who lost his wife when she had cancer and she was pregnant. There are so many women who go through cancer when pregnant, and sometimes they are left with no other option than to terminate a much-loved and much-wanted pregnancy. We need to do so much more to support those women. Incredible clinicians are already doing work in this space to support those women and their babies, but there is so much more to be done.

Lastly, if you will spare me an indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will talk about IVF. Whenever you go through IVF, sometimes you are left with nothing in your arms. For many women in Northern Ireland, they only have one funded cycle of IVF at the minute. For those women who do not have many eggs during the egg collection, you only have one shot at a fresh egg transfer. If that is not successful, you walk away with nothing. You are one shot and done. I call on Members across this House to help our campaign to ensure that Northern Ireland gets three fully funded cycles of IVF or ICSI—intracytoplasmic sperm injection—because those women experience that loss and potentially never gain that baby in their arms. I ask Members to be mindful and to help me in that cause for women in Northern Ireland. Lastly, I thank everyone who is sharing their experiences tonight—you are incredible.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. The speaking limit has dropped to six minutes. I do not want to interrupt anyone’s speeches, but using “you” and “your” is not good form. You are speaking through the Chair, and please remember that.

21:21

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I am reminded of the words of Jo Cox that we have more in common. In sharing experiences tonight, I hope that the public and my constituents will see that there is more in common between us in this House.

We all recognise that baby loss brings an unimaginable grief. No family should have to face that loss in isolation. This is the 24th Baby Loss Awareness Week, and I pay tribute to Tommy’s, Sands and the many charities, NHS staff and volunteers in York who are supporting families through their darkest moments. Through their compassion, they help to ensure that bereaved families know that they are never alone.

For too many families, baby loss could have been preventable. Too often, families have said that they were not listened to when they raised concerns. Although my own family’s experience is different from that of families who experienced a loss, this debate is personal. When my wife and I welcomed our first child, we experienced a traumatic birth. We are fortunate, blessed and lucky, but it was traumatic none the less. It left a profound mark on our family, particularly on my own mental health from witnessing it all. I pay tribute to the Sky journalist Sarah-Jane Mee who, with her empathy, gave me the confidence to share my story.

The findings of Baroness Amos’s independent review into maternity and neonatal services are important, but in the short time I have, I would say that they are insufficient in terms of non-birthing partners. I warmly welcome the new Health Secretary to her place, and I am appreciative of her predecessors who met me and showed me empathy in sharing my experiences. I know that many other Members feel the same and share her view that there is a national crisis around the standards of maternity care.

I will touch on what my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) said. Given the time limit, I will focus on just one of her remarks, which was around the GMC, professionals and holding people to account. As one of those families affected, too few professionals seem to have been struck off or held to account. That is echoed through some of the work in the Ockenden review and the other investigations at Nottingham. I am now working with her in her review of maternity services at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust, where ours was one of the families involved. I will just say on record that Donna has been respectful, kind and empathetic, and I thank her for that. At the heart of every recommendation must be one simple principle: that families must be listened to, that no non-birthing partner should feel helpless as their warnings go unheard, and that no bereaved family should be left wondering whether a different response could have changed the outcome for their baby.

I pay tribute to Hayley Patrick-Copeland and the two daughters that she lost: Alya and Aleah. She is a powerhouse of a northern mum, and her knit and natter groups, which I have visited in my constituency, have been knitting hats and gowns for stillborn children. She texted me to say that awareness was important so that people feel less alone and can more openly share their wonderful babies’ stories. She has channelled her grief into helping others, creating ribbon displays across York that offer remembrance, comfort and solidarity to families affected by baby loss. I pay tribute to Hayley, and to the local organisations supporting her. I thank Huntington working men’s club and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, and I say, “Hayley, you are amazing—you really are.”

I will end my speech now, because I want to let other Members in, but I will first speak with some candour. The test of every review, recommendation and action plan is whether families’ experiences actually improve, not only in the immediate aftermath of loss but in the months and years that follow. I was immensely grateful to the team at York hospital who were there for us during the second birth. On Thursday evening, the global “Wave of Light” will bring people together to remember those who have been lost too soon. However, I must say that the overwhelming message I receive from families in York is that sympathy is never enough, and I hope that tonight’s debate is a clamouring call for action. We owe those families the action that they deserve, and we owe it to the babies we remember this week to learn every possible lesson from their loss.

21:25

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

I thank Members on both sides of the House for initiating the debate. It comes at a very important moment for many of my constituents. Owing to a serious staffing crisis, all births at North Devon district hospital have been suspended for more than eight weeks, which has forced more than 180 expectant mothers to travel for at least two hours to Exeter to give birth since 11 August. Many fear that the journey is not safe, and have experienced weeks of stress and anxiety, picturing unexpected complications, the trauma of a difficult birth or the loss of a little one. This is a fear that cuts through the whole community, down every street and across every class and background. I that know I am not the only Member who receives private emails from constituents with heartfelt or even heartbreaking stories, shared only in complete confidence.

There are estimated to be 120,000 miscarriages in the UK each year, although the NHS does not know the true figure and some estimates are far higher. Losing a child is something that no one should ever have to suffer, and many families are left grieving for what might have been. Reading their accounts, one is struck by how much small acts of kindness matter. We read about how trusts go about investigating a tragedy, about whether overworked NHS staff took time to listen to parents, and about whether or not public bodies use their child's name.

In North Devon we are blessed with the hard work of a wonderful local charity called Families in Grief, which gave me a simple glimpse into how complex bereavement support can be. The loss of a child has an impact not only on parents but on siblings and extended family, and for a long time. People experience grief very differently, and a death can shatter whole families. Speaking as a father and, now, a grandfather, I can say that the national health service is a modern miracle for some families. According to the Office for National Statistics, the infant mortality rate has fallen by more than 90% since 1900, and by more than 35% in just the past 25 years, and yet in some ways we seem to have gone backwards. According to the pregnancy and baby loss charity Sands, the proportion of parents waiting six months or more for post-mortem results has trebled to more than one in five. That is especially painful when it stops parents planning for another child.

Bereavement support is still only offered to parents after they have experienced a third miscarriage. The Liberal Democrats have argued for bereavement care after every miscarriage, which has also been proposed by the national pregnancy charity Tommy’s. They advocate basic counselling and advice after the first miscarriage, then blood tests and more advanced scans after each successive miscarriage. Those are important for those experiencing bereavement, but also in respect of the underlying health risks that need to be identified for a future pregnancy.

In North Devon, our local hospital is desperately trying to fill the two consultant spaces for the rota so that births can resume locally, but hundreds of families in our community also deserve a full independent review into what has happened. We need accountability, so that it never happens again. No parent should have this major milestone in life ruined by inadequate access to services, poor-quality care or insensitive treatment.

In December, the Government’s neonatal and maternity taskforce is due to put together a new national action plan to strengthen maternity units in the hospitals across the country. The desperate case of North Devon district hospital, and the peril of young parents in my constituency, should be front and centre in the taskforce’s thinking. I have met many families who struggle even to get to Exeter because of a lack of transport in my rural constituency.

[Dr Prinsley]

I am aware of the problem in the hon. Member’s hospital, and I would just like to say something quite shocking. We are talking about baby loss tonight, but we must also consider those babies who have been damaged by obstetric catastrophes. I will share a simple fact: the cost of the NHS obstetric service is about £3 billion per year, but we spend £1.3 billion per year on negligence compensation, with a total liability of £37 billion. The average claim for a damaged baby is £11 million. Although we are talking about baby loss and the problems affecting the obstetric service, we must also consider those babies who have been damaged because of obstetric disasters.

[Ian Roome]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing his experience as a clinician to the House, and I totally agree with him.

After writing to the Secretary of State four times since July and not receiving one reply, I would welcome an urgent meeting with her to discuss the issues around maternity and how the closure of North Devon district hospital is affecting my constituents in North Devon.

21:32

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

I commend so many colleagues for their powerful contributions to this debate. I want to talk briefly about three things: first, awareness, which is such an essential first step; secondly, the significant uplift and support that we need to see for bereaved parents; and thirdly, mental health support, which should always be there when people are trying for a baby, or when they lose a baby during pregnancy or during or after birth.

I speak with a bit of relevant personal experience: I now have three beautiful children, but before I got pregnant with my eldest, I had three miscarriages. Three times my husband and I went through a surge of hope, excitement and nerves, the early planning for life with a baby, and sharing the news with a few close friends and family, only for it to end in disappointment. I was really knocked by it each time and was really unsettled, as there was no explanation for why it had happened. I was really frustrated by all the people who just said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” because I did not believe that I would be fine. I did not understand what had happened, and I did not know whether I would be able to have a baby or not, but I suppose I was lucky, because the NHS did get to the bottom of it, and I was then able to have my children.

More importantly, I am here today on behalf of all my constituents in Aylesbury and the villages, an estimated half of whom will have been affected by some form of baby loss, either directly or through someone they know. I bet that many of them will not have shared those experiences, or will not have felt supported if they did.

My first point is about awareness, because until I looked into it, I had no idea that half of all adults living in the UK are affected by baby loss. Before I had my own miscarriages, I had no idea that one in five pregnancies ends that way. I thank the organisations that are working nationally to change that, such as Sands and Tommy’s, and I thank the groups in my constituency who are doing the same. I want to give a special shout-out to Aylesbury Yarn Bombing, which has covered post boxes across Aylesbury with incredibly beautiful and moving toppers featuring hand-stitched sleeping babies, candles, teddy bears, hearts and little notes asking passersby to take a moment to show support and remember the babies we have lost and the families who have been affected. That is so important, because it is on all of us to educate ourselves, to speak more openly about baby loss, and to reach out and rally around people who are struggling as a result of it.

That takes me to my second point, which is about improving the support. I would like to make one specific point about miscarriage, because when I had mine it turned out to be quite a common and treatable issue, but it was not until the third miscarriage that I was eligible for the tests to discover that. If that miscarriage support had kicked in sooner, I could have avoided the trauma of multiple miscarriages. So I really support the graded model of miscarriage care developed by Tommy’s, which would allow at least those limited tests to start sooner. I ask the Secretary of State to look into that.

More broadly, we must end the lottery of care that exists for baby loss. I do hear from people who receive compassionate support—that midwife or bereavement counsellor who makes all the difference—but there is far too much of the opposite. I will quote one lady from my constituency who got in touch before this debate:

“I am a mother of a stillborn baby, I was full term. 41 weeks and six days overdue with my first born. She was born sleeping. I received very little support afterwards. I was given a leaflet and told don’t worry, you’re healthy, you’ll have a baby soon.”

That was that, and it is not good enough. She is one of too many people being dismissed in this way.

As we have heard, we need the national framework to set out what high-quality support for baby loss should look like. We need better data behind it, and clear ambitions and accountability for maternity safety more broadly. As always when it comes to maternity care, we need a sustained focus on reducing the pervasive inequalities in access and outcomes. We need dedicated space in hospitals, too. Another constituent told me about going through surgery for ectopic pregnancy, being put straight back into a public waiting area, and then being told there was no bed to stay overnight. That has to change, and I know we are making good strides towards that, but there is so much more to do.

My third point is specifically about the mental health support that should surround baby loss. Of course, it is not only a physical experience or a bereavement; it can have a profound and lasting effect on mental health. Research published by Miscarriage UK in March this year found that more than two thirds—68%—of respondents reported mental health problems following pregnancy loss, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. Research supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research has broken that down for early pregnancy loss, finding that one month afterwards 29% of women experienced post-traumatic stress symptoms, 24% experienced anxiety and 11% experienced depression severely. This continues for many months and years, and of course includes people with no history of mental illness. According to the baby loss charity Sands, only one in six bereaved parents are able to access any mental health care through the NHS.

Mental health support must be an integral part of the support after baby loss, and I would love to see national standards for mental health services for bereaved parents, as well as national guidance for the local commissioning of these services to help end the postcode lottery that I have spoken about. We of course also need the staff, training and resources to be able to deliver these services, which we struggle with across the NHS, particularly for mental health. This is the only way to ensure that every parent experiencing baby loss will have access not just to compassionate clinical care and bereavement support, but to appropriate mental health support, including a clear pathway for referral to specialist services, where that is needed.

Ultimately, for every parent and family experiencing baby loss, the response from the NHS and from society has to be one of dignity and compassion, and it has to result in the right support. I hope today’s debate will be a step in that direction.

21:38

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to all the excellent speakers who have shared their story with the utmost bravery. This debate is one I have attended since I was first elected, and it is the only debate I know during which the Doorkeepers, quite rightly, distribute tissues. I am the vice-chair of the APPG on baby loss, and I pay tribute to everyone who has contributed to this debate and to the inquiry that the APPG has carried out.

I will start with a slightly more positive story, which is a personal one, but while the outcome is positive, this is relevant to some of the experiences we have heard about. We have just welcomed our third baby—he is about seven months old—and we had the good fortune to attend the midwifery unit at Warwick hospital. It is not in my constituency, but I would still encourage the Secretary of State to go to visit it, which I am sure the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) would welcome.

We had a very positive experience in the sense that the midwives were really good in their communication. I am going to protect my baby’s identity, but he has crazy hair, so I am going to call him baby Elvis. However, when baby Elvis came out, he was not breathing. I remember the moment, because the midwife had pressed the panic alarm and he came out and he was grey. I suppose I am speaking about it today because my wife has been trying to get me to talk about it for about seven months and I haven’t. And now I will do it in front of the TV cameras; she is a very patient woman.

What I remember in those moments—my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) talked about CPR—was that the midwife just went straight into action. I did not realise that the room had filled up with health professionals from across the hospital. It was quite a sight to see when I turned around, once everything had settled down. In the moment I thought, “Oh my god, we’re about to become another statistic,” but the midwives worked their magic.

The support needed by non-birthing partners has come up in the debate. I do not want to take away anything from mothers and what they go through—clearly, they go through everything, as we have heard—but there is a call that whatever support is provided takes into account partners and parents too. I admit that I have thought about that moment many, many times in the past seven months and I still do—those images do not leave you—so I hope that, in anything the Secretary of State can do and will do, they are taken into account.

In the limited time I have, I am going to make a few calls and recognise some of the charities I have worked with in my locality. There is work on a national framework to ensure that standards are put in place. Of course, any standards that are put in place will need key performance indicators and accountability along with them. I am sure the Secretary of State is looking at that and I welcome her being in her place today.

Many parents go through the NCT—National Childbirth Trust—training, but we went through a private provider called Bump to Baby. One key thing that came up was the training to be able to challenge what was given to us—my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford spoke about this—and to have the confidence to be able to say no or to ask why. That really helped us as a family to talk about our baby. The midwives, recognising that there were questions that needed to be answered, spent a lot of time answering questions afterwards—they really went over and above. The training during pregnancy is really important because it gives parents the power in their arsenal to be able to ask those questions.

The point about data and miscarriages has been made. It has also been made to me by my constituents, so I hope the Secretary of State can clarify what thought process she is going through around collecting data on miscarriages.

In my intervention earlier on the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), I mentioned the Lily Mae Foundation. I met Amy and Ryan, who set up the foundation over a decade ago and who have recently received the British Empire Medal. It is a smallish charity that punches way above its weight and they are incredibly strong in what they do. They have given therapy to over 1,000 parents grieving baby loss. They have supported professionals by giving them training, too. They pointed out the postcode lottery that does occur. Smaller charities do not always get the support and they are being asked to do more with less, so that is an important point that I wanted to stress. They see first-hand that increased load.

I want to pay tribute to a couple of friends of mine. Baby loss can touch anybody and they have gone through it in the past couple of months. They experienced it at Musgrove Park hospital. They were really keen for me to stress how great the labour team were, but they did see grieving bereaved parents next to families who were celebrating a birth. Clearly, that disparity still continues and it is one I have seen in other hospitals, too. Perhaps the Secretary of State could reflect on that, pay tribute to the staff of Musgrove Park and recognise baby Merlin, who they sadly lost.

Finally, on Thursday at St Philip’s church in Dorridge, many of my constituents will be gathering for the “Wave of Light” service and the windmill dedication set up by the TeddyRose Foundation.

21:44

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

I represent a large chunk of Morecambe Bay, and I will never forget the 2015 Kirkup report into maternity safety, published just one year after the birth of my first child. I am speaking in this debate because too many babies are still dying. I have met too many bereaved families, whether that is baby Ida’s parents, the constituents who had a medical termination due to a fatal foetal abnormality, the twins who lost their mum in childbirth, or the women who I speak to regularly who have lost pregnancies at all stages.

I support my colleagues’ comments on the Amos review, the Ockenden reports and the national maternity and neonatal taskforce. In her closing remarks, I would like to hear how the Secretary of State will drive the changes needed, as outlined in those reports. I would first direct her to the submission from all-party parliamentary group on patient safety to the Amos review. I would particularly direct the Secretary of State to the Japanese system of no-fault compensation for cerebral palsy, which gives automatic compensation to parents whose baby gets a brain injury, but does not prevent them taking further legal action. That has reduced costs, but more importantly, it has reduced the number of cases of profound cerebral palsy, because it has standardised reporting and learning processes.

I briefly flag that health is much wider than the healthcare we receive. The truth is that right now racism and poverty are killing babies and mums, and we need to do something about it. Those of us who are interested in patient safety talk a lot about culture. Culture is simply the way that we do things around here, but it can have a profound impact on safety, particularly the psychological safety of staff in raising concerns, which in turn affects the safety of services. Senior leaders and ward managers need to be able to welcome concerns and act swiftly on them, but unfortunately we too often see a culture that makes life difficult for staff when they speak out, and managers and leaders who do not take responsibility. One of the reasons that I welcome the Hillsborough law—the Public Office (Accountability) Bill—is that it changes the legal risk from one where honesty is seen as legally risky, to one where honesty in the event of a tragedy is now legally enforceable.

Further on culture, I highlight my worries that midwifery education and culture in some instances still promote normal birth ideology—I have seen that too often. In no other area do we expect bodies to work perfectly, and yet there are still some sections that think people can think their way to a natural birth, and I have seen the harm of that too often.

I will speak about miscarriages—I have left this until the end because, to be honest, even after nine years a pregnancy loss can still sting. Miscarriage is the most common complication in early pregnancy. There are about a quarter of a million miscarriages every year, but even that number is not exact; we do not know the true prevalence of miscarriage, which means that we are missing opportunities for data-led service planning and vital research.

Miscarriage is really common, and I hope that the openness that we are developing as a nation can help women to recover, while also recognising that it can have a severe impact on their mental health. Data from Tommy’s shows us that months after a loss many women have symptoms of anxiety, depression and even PTSD. Women who have experienced a miscarriage are 3.8 times more likely to die by suicide. I am not saying that there is a direct causal link, but there is an association that needs to be looked at. I am proud of what we have done as a Government by recognising baby loss and the toll that a miscarriage can take. We have heard about some of the problems with baby loss certificates, and I hope that that is addressed.

It is wrong that—most of the time—women still have to go through three miscarriages before they get care and support, so I urge the Secretary of State to fully roll out the Tommy’s-graded model of miscarriage care. It is essential that women get an appropriate level of support, information and treatment when miscarriage happens to them.

I want to give people some hope as well—I know that some very recent experiences have been cited in the Chamber today. Last week, I was reading a novel by Katharine Schellman. She has a line about the loss of a spouse, but it perfectly reflects my feelings a decade after pregnancy loss:

“It was still there, but quieter, a sad memory instead of a broken heart.”

I want to reassure colleagues that they can go some way to mending that broken heart.

Finally, I thank the people supporting families who lose a baby. I especially thank Matilda’s Mission, a baby loss charity that works in my constituency and that every year remembers baby Collinge. It supports so many families at the absolute worst time. It gives them a community who understand them and support them, and that is what we should have for every family.

21:50

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge). I thank her for sharing her personal story, as many others have in this Chamber. Those personal stories remind us all of the grief, the loss and the pain. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing this important debate to be brought forward.

Baby Loss Awareness Week provides an important opportunity to raise awareness and to reflect on loss. Everyone who has spoken tonight has reflected on loss, whether directly or through friends and family. However, we must recognise that the impact of baby loss extends beyond this week. It is not just this week; it is every other week of the year. Families continue to carry their grief long after this campaign ends.

Losing a baby, both before and after term, is devastating. Parents speak of the potential of what could have been, of the hopes and dreams they had for their child and the milestones that they believed they would celebrate, but that were not to be. With this loss comes immense grief and anxiety, and the impact, not only on the mother but on the wider family circle, cannot be overestimated.

I know that the mums, the dads and the siblings will probably feel the pain more, but the grandparents, aunties, uncles, sisters and brothers all feel it as well, because they are all living through their family member, hoping that the new life will be something they can enjoy as well. For many families, this continues to affect future pregnancies. Parents report feeling constant fear and anxiety, waiting with grim anticipation for this tragic event to happen again. Sadly, for some families it does.

My mother had four children, but she also lost four. My speechwriter Naomi, who is a very busy girl, also lost her first baby. Many of my constituents tell me of their loss, and this debate allows me to express, on their behalf, their sorrow and the fact that it means so much to them.

Supporting women through and after this loss should be a priority. We must advocate for open communication among friends and family, as many women have shared that talking about their loss has helped their healing and made them realise that they are not alone in this experience—and they are not alone in this experience. They have their family, and many others have been through the same pain.

Supporting women in this loss is essential, but we must also do everything we can to prevent loss, where possible. I drew attention in an earlier intervention to the research suggesting that giving women access to specialised care after their first miscarriage could help to prevent baby loss.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

My daughter is a rainbow baby. It is amazing that we managed to have her, but the hurt and the pain to get to that position, when you have lost children in between, is absolutely unbelievable. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me, based on what he has just said, that it is so important that after that first loss, as Tommy’s has suggested, intervention and professional support is given immediately, both in terms of investigating and understanding the cause and in terms of mental health support?

[Jim Shannon]

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman, as I think does everybody in the Chamber. Currently, specialist care is offered only after three miscarriages. Estimates suggest that if early intervention were offered after one miscarriage, potentially around 10,000 losses could be prevented each year in the UK. That is the magnitude of just one step in the right direction. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope that she can give us some encouragement. She is compassionate, and she understands how all of us in the Chamber feel about this issue, so I hope we can get that reassurance.

I want to speak about Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) already has done. I sincerely welcome the recent changes in Northern Ireland. We became the first region in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to provide paid leave to both parents affected by miscarriage. It is really important that our Minister took that step in the right direction. Maybe it is something that the Secretary of State would consider implementing here on the mainland where it would help many people. It is estimated that around 9,000 people per year in Northern Ireland are affected by miscarriage, which leaves me in no doubt that the change will have a real impact on families in Northern Ireland.

Further efforts have been made in Northern Ireland, including through the baby loss certificate scheme—perhaps a small thing but it is has a big effect. Certificates are now available to anyone who has experienced a pregnancy loss before the end of the 24th week of pregnancy. The formal recognition of the loss offers families, who previously went unrecognised, a degree of comfort and closure.

In an intervention on the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), I spoke about the importance of having a chaplain or minister available to give the succour and care that is sometimes needed. There is a spiritual dimension to loss. As a Christian, it would mean a whole lot to me, but I think it would mean a whole lot to others as well if they had that opportunity. Perhaps the Secretary of State can provide some reassurance on that as well.

We must ensure that the impact of these schemes is properly evaluated so that we can understand how effective they are in supporting bereaved families. If the evidence shows that measures are making a meaningful difference, this House must consider how similar support can be implemented across the UK.

It is clear that baby loss has a lasting impact. Every baby lost represents a life that could have been lived and a future that might have been. We must show compassion and understanding to those affected, not only during Baby Loss Awareness Week but every day of the year.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. With colleagues withdrawing, we have a few more minutes on the clock, so Back Benchers are now on an eight-minute speaking limit.

21:57

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

I want to begin by telling the House about Rita Grace Ghazala, the daughter of my constituents Fadi and Liz. I consider myself very privileged that Fadi and Liz have asked me to share Rita’s story today. Not only have they shared her story with me, but they have allowed me to share her story with the House.

During pregnancy, Fadi and Liz learned that Rita had Edwards’ syndrome, a life-limiting condition. They knew that the time they might have with their daughter could be desperately short. Rita was born in December 2024 and spent nine days with her mum and dad at the Royal hospital for children in Glasgow. Fadi and Liz describe those nine days quite simply as

“the best nine days of our lives”.

Nine days is a heartbreakingly short life, but Rita’s life was filled with love and has left an extraordinary legacy.

In the months since Rita’s death, Fadi and Liz have channelled their grief into making things better for other babies with expected short lives and their families. Through Rita’s Legacy of Hope, thousands of people have supported their fundraising. They have funded Rita’s Room at Crossbasket House, providing a dedicated space for bereaved families so that no other family has to go through counselling sessions in an office. The funding has also provided two portable incubators, allowing parents to keep their babies close and make the most of their precious time together, and a cuddle cot and blanket system for Scotland’s tertiary paediatric palliative care service.

It is an extraordinary legacy for one little girl. Through that work, Fadi and Liz also identified something that they believe needs to change. Fadi and Liz knew long before Rita was born that she had a life-limiting condition, so that pregnancy was full of hospital appointments, treatment, worry and uncertainty—for months. They have been clear to me that they were fortunate, as they were financially able to take time away from work, and had employers who would support them, but they know that many families receiving the same devastating news will not be in that position. No parent who learns that their time with their child could be measured in hours or days should have to worry about whether they can afford to take time away from work.

Fadi and Liz believe that families whose baby has been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition should have a statutory right to paid leave during pregnancy. They call that proposal Rita’s law. The Government have already taken important steps to strengthen the rights of parents, including through the Employment Rights Act 2025, and I particularly welcome the review that is under way of the parental leave and pay system, but Fadi and Liz’s experience highlights a gap. The support available following the birth or death of a baby does not address the particular circumstances of parents who are told during pregnancy that their baby is expected to have a very short life. I therefore ask the Secretary of State to work with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade to ensure that the needs of those families are explicitly considered in the parental leave and pay review, and to take a serious look at Fadi and Liz’s proposal for Rita’s law.

Rita’s life was heartbreakingly short, but it mattered enormously. Fadi and Liz have ensured that Rita’s name will be associated with compassion, dignity and giving families precious time together. I hope that by listening to their call for change, we can help that legacy reach even further.

22:01

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate, which is always so powerful. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for leading it so sensitively.

There are few things that compare to the joy of knowing that you are about to become a parent—you consider names and imagine the future, and those little things in life suddenly take on a whole new meaning—but for some families, there is a moment when all of that changes, and a future that was so full of possibility is filled with uncertainty and grief.

My constituents Phil and Emma were brave and generous in sharing their experiences with me and my team. Emma’s story is one of repeated pregnancy loss, difficult childbirth experiences, and not receiving the care and support she needed. I will share Emma’s story in her own words. I warn hon. Members that Emma describes her experience of miscarriage in harrowing detail. She told me this:

“Our story of pregnancy loss started back in March 2019. I booked a GP appointment after continually bleeding for three weeks. No pregnancy test was offered, and I was told to monitor the bleeding. After fainting at work from persistent blood loss, I visited the Samuel Johnson walk-in centre and I was given a routine pregnancy test, which came back positive.”

Emma’s first miscarriage was followed by another pregnancy in February 2020, during the pandemic. She described the anxiety of attending appointments alone, without her husband, after her previous experience of loss. She went on to give birth to her daughter Alice, but the difficulties did not end there. Following Emma’s discharge, she developed an infection and was passed between three hospitals. She described being physically weak, emotionally struggling, and without the support she needed.

After experiencing birth trauma, Emma and Phil were understandably nervous about having another child, but in March this year, they discovered that they were expecting again, and were excited about the possibility of a positive experience. Emma wrote:

“I had an in-person eight-week midwife check on 19 March and was advised I needed birth trauma counselling, which I welcomed as it finally felt as though somebody was listening and cared about my past experiences.”

But, at 11 weeks, Emma began spotting. She knew that she needed help quickly. She called the early pregnancy unit at New Cross hospital eight times before her call was answered. Despite her concerns, she was offered an appointment several days later. A private scan confirmed that the pregnancy was no longer viable, but the hospital could not bring her appointment forward. Emma described what happened next:

“When we attended New Cross EPU on 14th April, we had to sit in the same scan room as pregnant women and ironically were taken into the same room where my first pregnancy was confirmed as a miscarriage.”

Despite the findings, Emma was told she needed another scan in 10 days. She was sent home without pain relief, follow-up appointments or even a number to call for help.

Just three days later, Emma experienced a devastating medical emergency at home. She said:

“I went to the toilet, and found I had haemorrhaged completely through my clothing. I was scared and alone.”

Emma passed out and was found in a pool of blood by her mother, who called 999. After waiting for 45 minutes, the ambulance service called back to say that Emma would have to make her own way to hospital. Her husband struggled to get her into the car and drive her to New Cross. When they arrived, the staff had not been informed of her situation. Emma describes the experience:

“My husband at this point pleaded with the staff for me to be seen. He had to explain multiple times what had happened, all whilst I was bleeding heavily.”

Eventually, Emma was taken into a treatment room, where her blood pressure dropped dramatically low and she lost consciousness. She was taken to intensive care, where staff discussed blood transfusions and emergency treatment.

Emma is clear that the staff who cared for her that day were wonderful, but her experience leading up to that point raises questions about the support available to women experiencing pregnancy loss and medical emergencies. Emma was discharged with blood-thinning injections but no emotional support or follow-up appointments. She sought help for her mental health, only to be told that miscarriage was “just something that happens”, and was given an NHS talking therapies leaflet. She eventually contacted Tommy’s, where she finally felt listened to and supported. Emma also raised a wider concern about how pregnancy loss is counted and recognised. She said:

“Despite the fact I have had two miscarriages, because I had a healthy pregnancy in the middle of these, my count will reset to one, almost rendering my first miscarriage as forgotten and pointless.”

Emma’s story highlights the physical and emotional impact of pregnancy loss, the importance of timely and compassionate care and the need to consider the experiences of partners and families alongside those of women themselves.

I want to finish by returning to Emma’s words:

“Emotionally, it is an incredibly difficult time, but physically the pain women go through is totally underestimated. We want change for women’s health, change for partners’ support, and change for all families that have had to experience any maternity issues or baby loss.”

It was so encouraging to see the Government introduce two weeks of unpaid leave for those who experience pregnancy loss, in any form and at any stage, and I am proud of the ambition set out in the women’s health strategy, but we now need to move as quickly as we can to ensure that every woman has access to high-quality miscarriage care and bereavement support, regardless of whether she lives in Cannock Chase, rural Northumberland or central London. No family should have to find out that the support available to them depends on their postcode. We have made important progress, and now we need to make sure that that progress is felt by every woman and every family who experience the heartbreak of losing their baby.

22:07

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent, little Bran Tunnicliffe, was born on 11 December 2024. He suffered a severe head injury during his birth and died on 17 December 2024. On 7 February, he had his funeral. He was born at the Royal Cornwall hospital in Cornwall and was transferred to Southmead after that. I am here to make some of the points that his parents have made to me about the care that he had, and to make some other points that have not been made yet about the system of post mortems and coroners’ inquests.

It was a struggle, after what happened, to get mental health support for Bran’s mum, and there was very little support for the other parent. The point has been raised across the House that the other parent is often left to feel that they are just there, and that what they think and feel is not taken into consideration and often does not really matter. Helen and Phil have asked me to say that the bereavement team at Treliske have been very good throughout their experience. They also wanted me to say that although many recommendations have been made following reports and investigations, it is difficult to see, as the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) mentioned, whether they are acted on, and how parents can ensure that care improves.

I spoke about Bran last year. The previous Health Secretary met Helen and Phil, who fed into the Government’s review. Some of the points made were also relevant to the Ministry of Justice, so a Minister from the MOJ was there, too. There was a very long wait for a pathologist’s report in Bran’s case; the lack of pathologists is a common issue, and the Minister did take that away. Bran’s inquest is still being delayed, and is scheduled to take place in the new year—more than two years since Bran died, which is an extremely long time. The family also said that they have had a number of dealings with the coroner’s court, and thought that perhaps improved training for coroners’ courts in dealing with parents who have undergone this kind of thing would be helpful. They found the whole process extremely difficult.

Some charities that really helped Bran’s family, and that are local to us in Cornwall, are Luna’s Fund, which supports parents in Devon and Cornwall, and 2wish, which is a child bereavement charity. Helen and Phil set up their own charity for Bran, Bran’s Library, which gifts picture books to parents in similar situations.

I want to mention my predecessor in this place, Cherilyn Mackrory, who spoke movingly in this House about her experiences and her daughter Lily. She chaired the APPG on baby loss with the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash.

So many families are affected by baby loss, and mine is no exception. We learn from the experiences of our constituents and our own families; hopefully the Health Secretary—it is fantastic that she has been here throughout this debate—can take away those stories and make improvements for the future.

22:14

[Matt Turmaine (Watford) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham). I pay tribute to all Members who have made such emotional, moving and powerful contributions this evening.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned continuity of care. I must confess to experiencing something of a thrill when, quite soon after being elected to this place in July 2024, I found myself in a Committee Room in Portcullis House next to Professor Chris Whitty, discussing continuity of care. It may not surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to hear that he also thinks continuity of care is a good idea, as do many people in the Chamber. The right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) mentioned the importance of a well-functioning NHS team to ensuring decent outcomes. I saw this last week, when I visited my local hospital to see a team of surgeons and other staff delivering really good outcomes by operating a robot to remove a gall bladder from a patient. Having a well-integrated team is absolutely vital.

This is an important debate. Those experiencing baby loss have an especially tragic bereavement. The loss of a loved one or friend is always tragic, and something to be sympathised with in solidarity, but those experiencing the loss of a baby are particularly deserving of our kindness, sympathy and support. There is the life cut short; there is the potential that has disappeared; and the joy of growing and living together—of shared love and laughter—is relegated to the imagination, and the hopes of what might have been.

The Secretary of State’s intention is clear: to support women and families let down by maternity services. I am glad to see that early loss is being recognised through the baby loss certificate scheme, which covers pregnancy loss before 24 weeks. The Government are investing in services to support families who are dealing with the tragedy of baby loss, so that every integrated care board can fund specialist bereavement midwives and bereavement services. In Hertfordshire, where my Watford constituency is located, many organisations are doing amazing work to support those grieving a miscarriage or the loss of a baby, including Alternatives Watford, West Herts Hospitals Charity, Petals, CHUMS, Sands and Tommy’s, as well as GP practices and the county council, which has a network for staff who have experienced baby loss; it provides much-needed support.

In a former career, I worked in health and social care, including for the Hertfordshire safeguarding children’s board. From my experience of supporting serious case reviews into the death of a child, or the child death overview panel, it is important to recognise the engagement of health staff in determining what has gone wrong, and we should acknowledge that. I welcome the efforts of the Government and those supporting this work to minimise the incidence of baby loss and to ensure that nobody goes unsupported when experiencing it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

22:15

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I start by declaring my interests as a member and former co-chair of both the baby loss and maternity APPGs and a member of the birth trauma APPG, and by thanking the hon. Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for securing this important debate to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week. It has been an emotional evening listening to the contributions of Members across the House, who have either bravely shared their own stories and those of their constituents, or have worked incredibly hard to bring about improvements in maternity and neonatal care and in bereavement care for those families who face the loss of a baby and, in some cases, both those things.

Since I was elected in December 2021, far too many reports have come to Parliament that detail the unimaginable pain of families who have lost or had injured babies or mums. From Shrewsbury and Telford, which impacted families in my community, some of whom were my close friends, and which I have spoken about on a number of occasions in this place, through East Kent, Nottingham and the many hospitals included in the Amos review, and new inquiries into Leeds and Sussex, there have been many reports and far too little action. The silent scandal of this country’s maternity crisis has unfolded in plain sight. Maternal deaths are higher than at any point in the last decade, and 65% of maternity units are not rated as adequately safe by the CQC, which has warned that there is a risk of normalising serious harm in maternity care.

The latest Embrace UK report shows that women from black ethnic backgrounds are nearly three times as likely to die during or up to six weeks after pregnancy compared with women from white ethnic backgrounds, with women from Asian ethnic backgrounds also facing a slightly increased risk. Stillbirth rates for babies born to mothers living in the most deprived areas remain significantly higher than those in the least deprived areas. Women in the most deprived areas are also twice as likely to die during or shortly after pregnancy compared with those in the least deprived areas.

The 2015 national maternity safety ambition aimed to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirth, neonatal and maternal deaths, and brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth by 2025. We have missed the target on that, and targets for the future have not been set, and they must be. Every year, £1.3 billion is spent on medical negligence payments. We are spending the equivalent of a third of the whole maternity budget on the price of failure, rather than keeping mums and babies safe in the first place. We know that many experienced clinicians are leaving the profession, burnt out by exhaustion, the crumbling units they work in and the lack of time for training for the increasingly complex pregnancies and births that they must deal with.

I welcome the fact that the Government, despite there having been three Secretaries of State this year, have shown commitment to improving maternity services. Their agreement to create the statutory role of a maternity commissioner and to legislate for that in the Health Bill as it makes its way through the other place is undoubtedly a good step, and I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Secondary Care, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for their constructive and collaborative approach to making that happen.

The Government have also established a maternity taskforce and commissioned Baroness Amos’s review—all welcome acknowledgment that improvement in maternity services should be of the highest priority. But there have unfortunately been missteps, too. Removing the ringfence from service development funding—the very fund designed to support enhanced care for complex pregnancies, multiple births and bereavement care and support—is incomprehensible in the light of the concerns that have been so widely raised, and I call on the Secretary of State to reinstate it.

Liberal Democrats have put improvements in maternity care at the heart of our work in this Parliament and have proposed a package to tackle the crisis, starting with safe staffing on every ward. Often, things go wrong at night or at weekends when the on-call consultant is at home—because, as we all know, babies have famously not grasped the importance of respecting normal working hours. We would ensure that a consultant obstetrician is present 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that one-to-one midwifery care for every woman in labour is available, so that the early signs of complication are recognised quickly.

Many pregnancies and births are more complex now. Training teams to deal with that is essential, and we call on the Government to introduce mandatory, regularly updated salaried training for all staff. For those in leadership roles, we would work on a culture of openness, learning from mistakes and speaking up when it is obvious that things are going wrong.

Many Members this evening have talked about better support throughout pregnancy, ensuring that high-risk mums have the right team around them from the start and that, crucially, women are listened to throughout their pregnancy. We would tackle the huge disparities in outcomes for black, Asian and disabled women and those from deprived backgrounds through better training to understand risk, alongside investment in the public health measures that are so critical to tackle some of the drivers of these disparities.

Finally, we urge the Government to recognise that, tragically, not every pregnancy goes to plan. We urge them to record all miscarriages so that the issue is no longer hidden, to support every woman who has had a miscarriage, not make them wait for their third one, and to invest in ensuring there is bereavement care for every family who needs it. There is, of course, undoubtedly a cost to all this, but it is less than half of that eye-watering medical negligence bill.

The Thirlwall inquiry highlights the failure of the NHS to learn from mistakes and implement recommendations from detailed investigations undertaken when things go wrong. It has highlighted how constant top-down reorganisations of the NHS have prevented progress and obscured the monitoring of improvements, and it says that a lack of political will has led to a failure to overcome the barriers to change for the better.

I have heard colleagues from all parties on both sides of the House agree on the urgent need to improve maternity services this evening, and I am encouraged by the steps that the Government have taken so far, but now it is time for action. I am ready to work with colleagues from all parties to tackle this crisis, and to ensure that no other family has to endure the pain of the avoidable loss of their beloved baby. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State that the Government have the political will to do the same.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call shadow Minister Dr Caroline Johnson.

22:22

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

First, I must declare an interest as a consultant NHS paediatrician and a member of the British Medical Association and of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and also that I have worked in neonatal intensive care in a number of different hospitals, including Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, where I worked as a junior doctor, briefly overlapping with the initial period of the Ockenden review.

I congratulate the hon. Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for securing this important debate, and also charities such as Bliss, Tommy’s and Sands for their important work.

As has been said, this has become somewhat of an annual debate, and it follows the same pattern. We hear many stories—we have heard many emotional stories this evening from very brave Members who have put forward their words or the words of their brave constituents. We reflect on the babies that have been lost—their first words, when they would have taken their first steps, who they would have grown up to become. We talk in sorrow and in memory. But there is also some frustration, because 13 babies every day will die shortly before, during or after their birth. So although it is important to reflect, I firmly believe that families would like us also to focus on prevention and service improvements. I shall therefore focus in the rest of my remarks on the question of whether the Government are doing all they can to tackle baby loss, and are doing so as quickly as possible.

As a children’s doctor, I have been privileged to attend hundreds of births. Politics offers the opportunity to save more lives than doctors can across the whole country, because it has the power to make impactful change and save lives, and the Government must use it.

Just over a decade ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash, then the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, set a target to halve the rate of stillbirths and neonatal and maternal deaths by 2030. He did not succeed completely but made encouraging progress. Stillbirths fell by 20%, neonatal deaths fell by 20% and maternal deaths fell by a third. As my right hon. Friend himself said earlier, that means that 700 additional babies a year are waking up today and tomorrow, loving their parents and being loved by their parents, and bringing great joy.

The new Health Secretary came into post last month and I welcome her to her place. She is right when said that

“it is time to put maternity and neonatal care and safety at the top of the NHS agenda, where they belong.”—[Official Report, 15 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 1616.]

I know that this issue is important to her and we acknowledge that the Government have made progress in some areas. They have built on Conservative work by expanding baby loss certificates—we heard from the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) just how important and vital those certificates can be—and they have implemented Martha’s rule, so that people can have a second opinion.

I appreciate the Secretary of State is new in post, but her predecessors have acted too slowly. The Government came to power in July 2024 saying that they had a plan for the NHS, but it took them a year, until July 2025, to bring forward their 10-year plan. They said that they will bring forward a neonatal task force, but they took seven months to decide who was going to be on it. They said that a maternity and neonatal plan was going to be produced, and that a rapid review would produce a plan by December 2025, but it came in June 2026, almost two years after their election.

The national maternity investigation brought forward two key recommendations. The first recommendation is to appoint a maternity and neonatal commissioner, which the Government have promised to do. That promise was announced over three months ago, so will the Secretary of State tell us when that appointment will be made? Will it be delayed by putting it on a statutory footing or will she be able to make the appointment anyway? The second recommendation is to develop a modern service framework to establish minimum standards for maternity care. The Government announced that they were developing a national action plan on that, but it will not be ready until December 2026. Will the Secretary of State guarantee that it will be ready by December 2026, which is now very soon?

In the meantime, the Government have promised £41 million for maternity and neonatal buildings. Will the Secretary of State tell us how and where this money will be spent, and which hospitals will benefit? My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) talked about people experiencing baby loss or who had babies on the neonatal unit being placed on a ward next to people who were celebrating the births of healthy children, who were beside them. Will the Secretary of State say how she is going to manage that so it does not happen any more?

The Government have spoken about the black and Asian maternal mortality gap. In their manifesto, they committed to a target to close that gap. Will the Secretary of State tell us when that target will be published and how she will close that gap?

The workforce is key to delivering these outcomes. The last Conservative Government created a long-term workforce plan for the NHS, but this Government decided that they wanted to create their own workforce plan, which is absolutely their right to do so. We were promised that plan by the end of 2025. We are now deep into autumn 2026, and we are being told they will provide an update on the workforce plan “in due course”. Having previously been told it was imminent, that is somewhat disappointing.

The Government need to know and say how many midwives they are going to need, as well as how many obstetricians, gynaecologists and paediatricians. How will all those people be trained? How many more medical school places may be required? The Government promised time and again that they would double the number of medical school places, yet they have rowed back on that promise like it never existed. Will the Secretary of State tell us once and for all if the Government will be doubling the number of medical school places, or if that was just a 2024 general election promise? On what date will the workforce plan be ready and published? The manifesto also promised to train thousands of additional midwives. Will the Secretary of State tell us how many have been trained so far?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) spoke about the importance of listening to women and not having an ideological fixation on a normal birth or particular type of delivery, but instead looking for a good outcome. On training, will the Secretary of State elaborate on how she intends to encourage midwives and obstetricians to see themselves as one team? I know in some places they do, but in other places, tragically they do not. Will she set out how they can work together with the wider team of anaesthetists, paediatricians and other professionals to achieve the best outcomes for women, rather than a particular ideological outcome?

Some have talked this evening about the complexity of pregnancies in modern times. Can the Secretary of State talk about whether she feels nursing skills are required in midwifery, and to what extent? How does she intend to ensure that they are delivered? I know that the Government have their three shifts, one of which is prevention. Will she talk about vaccination and chronic disease optimisation before pregnancy and how they could help to reduce the number of babies lost?

On a wider level, the NHS is being reorganised. I appreciate that that was announced before the Secretary of State became the Secretary of State, but the abolition of NHS England and the shaking up of ICBs is causing disruption to health services. The abolition of Healthwatch, which she still has time to do something about, is removing the independent voice—the listening to women that we have heard about so much this evening.

There are many, many fantastic NHS staff, and many women—most women, in fact—get great care, but some do not, and the findings of recent investigations and investigations over many years have been hugely disturbing. I know that the Secretary of State cares very deeply about this topic, so I would like her reassurance that these plans will be published, the staff will be trained and the taskforce and commissioner will be effective, and that she will deliver on the maternity safety that everybody right across the House wants to see.

22:29

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Yvette Cooper)]

May I say a huge thank you to everybody who has spoken in the debate this evening for the personal stories they have told, the tributes they have given to their constituents and the personal stories of constituents that they have told? This is a moment for the whole House to come together and reflect on the babies lost and on our responsibility to do everything we can to support families who go through the unimaginable and lose a baby or child, and to do everything we possibly can to prevent it happening to more families in the future.

I thank the Members who secured the debate today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for the work that I know he has done on the APPG and for his courage in talking about his own experiences and his determined focus on the action that is needed. I also thank the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), one of my predecessors, who I know championed patient safety and maternity safety in particular. It is hugely welcome that he is still speaking out so strongly and has sat here throughout the entire debate this evening.

I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), who is doing such an incredible and invaluable job as our national maternity and neonatal adviser. I thank her for her work and the incredible job she is doing in ensuring that parents’ voices are heard, that babies are remembered and that change is driven forward for families in the future. Her work has been hugely powerful. I have seen the work that she has been doing with parents across the country and with the maternity taskforce.

I thank everyone, because no one should underestimate the courage that it takes to talk about some of the most devastating personal experiences in such a public forum and in a way that is all about helping and giving comfort to others. They have brought an empathy and humanity that, if we are honest, we do not always show in this place, but we have come together to show them this evening.

In particular, let me say that this debate is about Mallorie, Jasper, Jesse, Joshua, Nittaya, Chester, Kate, Harry, Alya, Aleah, Theo, Ida, Bran, Wynter, Harriet, Sebastian, Koupar, Teddy, Quinn, Aubrey, Grace, Poppy, Dexter, Luna, Theo, Siena, Rita, baby Ladybird and baby Collinge. We remember them all.

As my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) said, on this Thursday evening at 7 pm, hundreds of parents in every one of our constituencies will light candles at home to remember babies who they have lost. It is something that spreads across the world, from one time zone to the next, as a global wave of light to unite parents from every continent in an act of collective grief. We will go on social media and see the pictures of burning candles posted by mums and dads. For those families, the sense of loss does not go away and it does not grow lighter or less painful, but on that day of 15 October, there is at least the knowledge that it is shared and that together, we hold a candle up to an issue that for too long has been hidden, ignored or dismissed. We are saying to every family who have faced the pain of losing a baby, “You are not alone, and you deserve support.”

The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) raised an issue that I want to refer to. Earlier this evening, I had a conversation with Gina Jacobs, who lost her stillborn son Robert 57 years ago. At the hospital, he was taken away, and she never saw his face. Only years later did she discover that he had been buried in a mass grave without her knowledge. Just imagine the heartbreak of losing a child, followed by the pain of realising that something so important and personal had been kept from her. Across the decades, many bereaved parents have lost babies in NHS hospitals and been denied any say in, or any information about, what would happen to their remains. On behalf of the Government, I issue a profound apology to those parents—I have issued that apology to Gina today, but I issue it to so many more like Gina who have sought answers over many years. I am sorry for the unthinkable pain caused by those historic practices, because what happened to those parents should never have happened, and we need to ensure it can never happen again.

While I have the time to do so, I want to also recognise the parents of baby Dexter from my constituency, because Dexter’s mum Sophie is in the Gallery this evening. I spoke to Sophie and Dale some months ago, before I became Health Secretary. Their story and Dexter’s story had a profound impact on me, and it is one of the reasons I am so determined to make maternity and neonatal care a priority for the NHS and for the Government. Dexter died in 2018, less than 24 hours after his birth, following hospital failures that were admitted years later. I have listened to Sophie talk about the concerns they had not being listened to and about failures in diagnosis, early intervention and treatment. They went through the unimaginable and were then unable to get answers, and eight years later, they are still navigating NHS complaints, regulators, legal processes, the coronial system and the parliamentary ombudsman, trying to get answers and accountability. I want to acknowledge Sophie’s determination and the courage it takes to be here today, and the commitment of so many parents who have been through the unimaginable and through that trauma, but who keep campaigning for others.

All of us in this Chamber have a responsibility to Dexter’s family and to every family represented in this debate—a responsibility to listen, to learn and to act. As Sophie said to me earlier, trust begins with truth, and if you cannot get answers about what has happened, that compounds the anguish and the distress. That is why I have made maternity and neonatal care a priority; it is also why I want to recognise the wonderful care that so many midwives, consultants, support staff and health visitors in our NHS provide when families need it most, right across the country. However, we also know the devastating stories where things have gone wrong, where families did not get answers, and where so much more needs to be done. As part of our new maternity and neonatal taskforce, we need to ensure that we have a new national action plan drawn up, but also that work is done to establish a new modern services framework of proper standards across maternity and neonatal care. That is crucial because 25 years ago, when I was a junior Health Minister, I had responsibility for maternity services. That was a full quarter of a century ago. I was pregnant at the time, so Members can imagine that I had a particular interest in maternity services.

One of the things that I announced at that time was that there should be a new set of standards, with a national services framework for maternity and child health. When I arrived in the Department as Secretary of State, I said, “What do we need to do to address the Amos report, the Ockenden reviews, the Kirkup review of Morecambe Bay and the many different reviews that we have had?” One of the responses I got was, “We need a modern services framework.” I asked how different that would be from the old framework, given that we would need to modernise the standards from the existing one. They said that the existing one does not exist, because it had just been allowed to lapse. We therefore did not have a set of national standards in place. We have to put that right, and I think there is collective determination on that. The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) referred to the importance of national standards, and that is one of the things that needs to be done as part of the work of the taskforce, alongside the action plan.

Right at the heart of this has to be listening to parents and in particular to mothers. The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) spoke powerfully about her personal experience of feeling that she was left having to make choices or that she had to fight to be listened to. Nobody—no parent, no mother—should be in that situation. One reason that it is so important that we legislate for and appoint a new independent maternity and neonatal commissioner is that this issue cannot simply be something where a spotlight is shone when we have a debate in this House, when a new review comes out or when particular Health Secretaries say, “This is a priority.” It has to always be a priority for our health service, because it is about the very start of a family’s life. It is about some of the most important things that our national health service does.

Many Members have talked about miscarriage, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friends the Members for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) and for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), who have talked about the importance of miscarriage care. We are working with Tommy’s to assess its findings in its miscarriage study, which is hugely important. It is important that miscarriage care is included as part of the modern services framework that we are drawing up. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) importantly talked about the impact that miscarriage care had on his constituent. That needs to be a central part of those standards and how we provide support for families in those circumstances. We should never underestimate the impact that miscarriage can have at different stages in a pregnancy, and the deep distress that can come from miscarriage through to stillbirth through to loss in neonatal care. At every stage, we must be aware of the long-lasting impact that loss can have on the family and the trauma that can be caused, too.

Many Members referred to the importance of bereavement care and services. We are already putting additional investment of £9 million into bereavement suites. Seven-day-a-week bereavement services need to be the standard across maternity and neonatal settings. All trusts are reporting compliance with that, but we need to ensure that it is happening in practice. They have also been funded to provide specialist bereavement midwives. Those services are crucial, because every family needs time to grieve after losing a baby, and needs immediate support and care.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) spoke of the importance of the employment law reforms, and the fact that bereavement leave is now allowed for pregnancy loss before 24 weeks. We know of the impact that such losses can have on families, and the importance of being able to provide support at that time. We are currently drawing up a new mental health strategy, and that needs to include not just post-natal depression but bereavement, and the distress and trauma that can be experienced as part of maternity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) spoke about inequality issues, such as the fact that black women have an increased risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and maternal mortality. It is shocking and deeply distressing that in the 2020s we are seeing inequalities of that kind, as well as seeing periods during which maternal mortality among some groups and in some areas has increased. That must be central to the work done by the maternity and neonatal taskforce. We will be setting out the targets and the progress that are needed and the action that we must take to address such inequalities, particularly those relating to ethnicity—we need to challenge racism—but also those involving deprivation.

The right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale referred to the normal birth ideology. There is no place for any ideology in childbirth: childbirth has to be about the mums and the babies and safety, and about what is right for the family. As my hon. Friend said, it has to be about safety. It has to be about informed choice, and it has to be about compassion. No mother should ever feel the pressure to live up to a particular kind of ideal birth. As we know, we are all different, and services need to reflect and support that.

The hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) spoke of the challenges that he has been facing, and the challenges that mothers and families have been facing, in his constituency. I know that later this week he will meet my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest, the national maternity and neonatal adviser. I have spoken several times to the NHS chief executive exactly about what is happening in North Devon. I know that, because this is a workforce challenge, the hospital is taking action to increase recruitment, and that is crucial. It is unfair for families to be worrying, at a time when they should be looking forward to the birth of a new baby, about having to travel for two hours because local services are not open. We are looking into ways of ensuring that there is appropriate support for getting those services open in North Devon, but we are also looking at the workforce issues in other rural areas where more remote services are crucial and need to be provided and sustained, and we will continue to consider maternity issues in that context.

The hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) raised the important subject of Group B strep. We have a trial under way. There will be a report within the next 12 months, and the information and evidence will go to the UK National Screening Committee, which will examine the issue of testing. I thank the hon. Lady’s constituent, who I understand has been campaigning for a long time.

Let me also give a personal undertaking to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) to follow up the issue of the baby loss certificates directly with the Scottish Government. It is unthinkable that she could be left in such a distressing situation, and that others will be in a similar distressing situation, because of a lack of co-ordination between Governments with which we should be able to deal.

I hope the House forgives me if I have not covered the other points that have been made. I am keen to follow up on the important points about CPR training, maternity triage, regulation and a series of other things, but I want to come back to a broader issue. It feels to me as though maternity services and neonatal services have not been taken seriously enough by the NHS and the Government for too long, and have too often been treated as a sidecar. Hospitals and acute trusts have a lot of things happening, but my sense is that the maternity unit has often been treated as a bit of a sidecar to the main hospital. Although there may be some brilliant work and support being done within a maternity unit, it is not always seen by the rest of the hospital and the rest of the trust, so when things go wrong, too often too little is done. When parents are not listened to and something goes awry with the support, care and compassion that are needed, often strong enough action is not taken to make sure that something is done.

In those cases, it has meant that we have had mothers and babies treated as second-class patients. Mothers and babies should never be treated as second-class patients, because one of the most important things that our NHS does is to be there at the very start of a new family’s life. If we get that right for a new family, it supports them for the rest of their lives. I recognise the remarkable and wonderful care provided in many places, but I still have a strong sense that, overall, our NHS has not been giving start of life, maternity and neonatal services the priority that they really need to be given.

[Alicia Kearns]

When the Secretary of State meets her officials and has this discussion, I urge her to cite what happened during the pandemic. Despite the fact that it was medically illogical, what did middle managers do in NHS hospitals? They said that women who were coming to give birth or to miscarry had to do so without their partners. People told me, “This is a nonsense, Alicia. Stop saying that women are being treated badly by the NHS. Women have given birth for thousands of years.” Women were mistreated during the pandemic and we were shown the maternity sidecar, exactly as the Secretary of State said. I say to anyone who stands in her way on this issue that she is absolutely right. We have the evidence of the last few years, and I urge her to use it.

[Yvette Cooper]

I take very seriously the points that the hon. Member makes, and I look forward to talking to her in more detail very soon.

The wider point that I want to make is that we are trying to implement many changes, and we are looking at different rules and different services. We are expanding Martha’s rule to all maternity and neonatal services so that there is a clear way—not just for women in labour and their families, but for staff in maternity services and neonatal services—to raise concerns, to ask for a second opinion and to make sure that we are building in the need to listen to families. However, all of this works only if it is part of a wider recognition that we have to give much greater priority to maternal and neonatal care.

The final thought that I will leave with people is that tonight’s debate has been about baby loss and the most distressing of circumstances, but we know that if support is really to be about giving every family and child the best start in life, it cannot just be about childbirth. It is about what happens throughout maternity and in those first few years as well. That is why I think one of the other most important things we are doing is restoring the Sure Start health services to family hubs right across the country and going back to co-ordinated support—every service coming together to support families and babies at the very start of their life. I again thank everyone who has spoken in this debate.

22:54

[Andy MacNae]

I thank everyone who has spoken and shared their experience, which is not easy. In that regard, I would just reflect on the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith). There are Members who could not be here today because their losses are too recent and too painful. As many others have reflected, baby loss affects far more of us than we actually realise. I thank all Members present, and I thank the Secretary of State for being here throughout—it means a lot; it really does matter. Her commitment and passion for getting this right shine through.

There has been clear consensus across the House about what needs to be done. We should all be very clear that in a year’s time—and we will be back here in a year’s time—we need to be talking about what has been done and real, tangible, concrete actions. To deliver that, we need the resource, the institutional capacity and the leadership to drive through that change with urgency and practicality. So next year, let us be celebrating what we have done, not talking about what needs to be done.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Baby Loss Awareness Week.