Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is the first private Member’s Bill that I have moved in 30 years, and I have been somewhat discombobulated by the extraordinary amount of effort that has gone into getting just six clauses before the House today, so I am deeply indebted to the Government Whips Office, which has been extraordinarily helpful. I do not know what is happening to this Parliament—it is vastly more helpful than I was ever expected to be when I was a Government Whip! Anyway, I am equally indebted to the Ministers and their private offices and, indeed, to the parliamentary draftsmen. Of course, included in those Ministers was the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), who has pursued this particular agenda in opposition and in government, frankly, since God was a boy.

Equally, I give my thanks to the Public Bill Office, which has been exceptionally helpful, and to our former Leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom, and her 1001 Critical Days Foundation. Finally, I give thanks for the heavy lifting done by my parliamentary assistant and by our former colleague, Will Quince, and his team. Of course, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Standing Orders are clear: we do not refer to people in the Gallery—I take it you have got the hint.

This Bill responds to the widely held view that services for infants, prospective parents and parents of young children are somewhat vulnerable when they rely largely on non-statutory guidance and programme funding. The purpose of the Bill is to shine the legislative spotlight on those services and to ensure that they are systematically understood and are known about and scrutinised by Parliament.

It is a truism that if we want a better future, we need to start with the provision of services to babies today. It is vital that those services are available in that critical period of 1,001 days from pregnancy through to two years old. If children are confident that they are safe and if they are responded to properly by adults, they will build relationships, they will be healthy, they will have language development and their future learning will be assured. That is vital. It is vital that we make that impact in those early weeks, months and years when 1 million neural networks are being formed every second and the baby’s brain grows to 80% of the weight of an adult’s brain by two years old.

If those services are not available, and if problems arise and are not addressed, there will be problems with speech, problems with relationships and problems with development later, so it is vital that they are there.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

As a former schoolmaster, my right hon. Friend will be familiar with the work of Piaget, who makes exactly that point: early development—prior attainment, as it is often called—is a determinant of subsequent progress both at school and beyond it. In rural communities such as mine, it is vital that the delivery of the services my right hon. Friend describes is done in a peripatetic way, ideally through what were once called district nurses—familiar figures in the community who could engage with local people and build trust. I wonder if we ought to add to his Bill, in the form of an amendment, a call to bring back district nurses.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I will address exactly that point shortly.

If a child is not developing properly and is not sleeping, feeding or communicating, parents need to know that they have somewhere to turn. If that difficulty is spotted by, let us say, a district nurse, a midwife, a health professional or one of the excellent workers in our family hubs, help is on the way. If that help does not arrive or does not arrive in a timely manner, problems will present later, when they will be much more difficult and more expensive to address.

I have received an enormous amount of advice from clinicians at the top of their game and from frontline workers with enormous experience, laying out all the vital services that ought to be provided for by a Bill such as this and, indeed, offering me substantial help in putting the Bill together. It would be perfectly proper for hon. Members to share that sort of advice with the Minister today, and that is the proper place for it. This Bill is quite deliberately written at a higher level. It does not specify what the services should be; it empowers Ministers to regulate and make provision for those services. That is the overwhelming purpose of the Bill.

Of course, there is a vast amount of evidence out there that suggests that all these services are vital, be it perinatal mental health services for parents, relationship training for parents and their child or the peripatetic services that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) referred to, as is the systematic provision of those services.

All that is vital, and if it sounds familiar it ought to be, because that is what is being delivered to a large extent by our excellent Best Start family hubs and healthy babies programme. The Bill does not provide something new in the way of services; it will make those services accountable, more easily scrutinised by Parliament, and therefore less prone to being deprioritised. We might recall what happened to much of the Sure Start programme, and let that be a salutary lesson, particularly for Opposition Members.

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Opposition Members, but does he mean that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were involved in that?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

The Government removed the requirement to ringfence the funding for Sure Start, and because local authorities were not required to spend that money in that way, they made their choices accordingly. I accept that it was the wrong priority, and I hope the whole House is the better for knowing that.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Some Sure Start places in London were created before Sure Start was formally created, and having seen my children go through it, I saw its direct benefits. Sure Start was structured around hubs, and there was a desire to go out and visit people at home—indeed, many of us visit people in their homes. As the right hon. Gentleman says, Ministers will interpret this measure, but there is something about a home visit by professionals that reveals a great deal about the challenges that children face, whether before going to nursery or afterwards, and whether by a health visitor or a midwife. From his research in developing the Bill, does he have anything to say about the importance of that?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I remember with respect to my own children the importance of a visit by the midwife, even after birth, and that is essentially the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings was making about the importance of district nurses. I entirely agree with the hon. Lady.

Clause 1 lays a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations to define these services, and the functions that the Secretary of State will carry out. Their primary duty is to work out what those services actually contain.

[Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)]

The idea of ringfencing and ensuring that we protect this time is the reason why the Bill is so important. Where councils did not ringfence in the past, they kind of lumped together youth services with this period of time. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that having a separate pot and protection for this time is valuable, even if we later have to look again at youth services for people as they get a bit older?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Yes, essentially today we are putting these services on a statutory footing. Of course subsequent Governments can change statutes, but this Bill makes it an explicit decision of this House and Parliament, rather than a fiat by Government decision.

Clause 2 places a duty on the Secretary of State to assess the need for these services, and that includes a duty to take into account the opinions of parents, prospective parents and carers, as far as reasonably possible. The first duty is to define what services and functions we are talking about, and the second is to make an assessment of need. The period in which to make that assessment must be no longer than three years before another period of assessment begins.

Clause 3 lays a duty on the Secretary of State to then make provision for the services that she has assessed are needed. To address one of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, that takes account of the fact that there may be different levels of need in different areas.

Clause 4 lays a duty on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament annually on the provision of those services and the outcomes that arise from them. Clause 5 is largely an interpretation of terms used within the Bill, be it “infant”, “prospective parent” or “prospective carer”. Clause 6 determines the short title of the Bill and provisions for its coming into force.

Effectively, this Bill lays a series of duties to make regulations on the Secretary of State: first, to specify services and functions; secondly, to assess the needs for them; thirdly, to provide for those services; and, fourthly, to report accordingly to Parliament. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

With the leave of the House, I would like to thank hon. Members for their contributions. I am presented with the difficulty of forming a Standing Committee that balances those who supported the Bill on Second Reading with those who opposed it. If any of those Members who were unfortunate in not catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, nevertheless want to serve on the Standing Committee, I will attempt to accommodate as many of them as I can.

During the debate, a number of Members referred to the need for breastfeeding and its importance. It reminded me that for many years, my wife was a breastfeeding counsellor for the National Childbirth Trust. Part of the training for that involved being a breastfeeding agent for the Egnell breastfeeding pump, which clients could hire for £1 a week. It was a bit like an iron lung that sat in our basement. It went “ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa” and extruded the milk. It was always a mystery to me why my SodaStream delivered a cloudy product, and it was not until later that I discovered that I had been serving milkshakes, because my wife had been using the machine and storing her product in the ice maker.

The Education Act 1944, or the Butler Act, which made such a profound difference to the lives of children in our country, was preceded by the coalition Government’s White Paper, in which they set out their vision in 1943 for

“a happier childhood and a better start in life”.

Let us hope that we have begun a process today with this legislation that will have as profound an impact.

Question put and agreed to.  

Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).

Access to Dental Services: West Sussex

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alison Griffiths]

In Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and in significant parts of Chichester, we have coastal areas. In our manifesto, the Conservative party pledged golden handshakes to attract dentists to coastal constituencies, because we know that is one of the issues. Could you tell please me what specific proposals you have to attract dentists to coastal constituencies?

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I haven’t any proposals.

[Stephen Kinnock]

We will be publishing the data on the golden hellos in August, along with all the other data. There is a time lag from the end of the financial year to when we have collated all the data—it takes a few months—so there will be data in August on a number of issues we have discussed today. The challenge of golden hellos is that we run into problems around the contract, incentivising people to do NHS dentistry, and getting people to live and work in certain parts of the country when they might be more attracted to a big city. We are aware of the challenges for coastal areas.

On the Portsmouth announcement, I have never driven from Portsmouth to Chichester, but I understand it is about a 20-minute drive, depending on the traffic—

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I definitely agree that my hon. Friend is a formidable champion for her constituency. She is absolutely right to raise the importance of easily accessible healthcare in places such as high streets. I am keen to ensure that the 250 neighbourhood health centres we have announced—with 120 by 2030—are delivered as quickly as possible. That is part of our plan to ensure that healthcare gets right into every local neighbourhood and community. I look forward to discussing that further with my hon. Friend.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

May I have a meeting to discuss my parents, carers and babies Bill, which affords support to the Best Start family hubs and healthy babies programme?

[Mrs Hodgson]

We know that the earliest stages of a child’s life are critical for their development, and the Government are committed to supporting families to give babies the best start in life. We are investing over £900 million in the Best Start family hubs and healthy babies programme to create an integrated, accessible system of support for families. I particularly look forward to considering the merits of the private Member’s Bill that the right hon. Gentleman will present to Parliament, and I do indeed look forward to meeting him to discuss that further.

Postural Tachycardia Syndrome

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising awareness of this very important condition. It is, as always, an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I am here because, like everyone else, I have had several of my constituents raise the problem of diagnosis taking far too long, the crippling impact that this condition can have on their lives and the difficulty that they face in accessing healthcare. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for sport and physical activity, I particularly want to raise the impact that PoTS has on people’s ability to continue to play the sport that they love. It may be that, because they are not being diagnosed, they think it is something that will impact their ability to continue their ordinary, everyday life. It is not right that diagnosis takes on average seven years. We must put more effort into and more emphasis on diagnosis and treatment.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be shorter.

[Cat Smith]

That intervention was an important one; sport was not included in my speech, but as someone who has PoTS and has run three London marathons, I can say that people can have PoTS and be sporty—it is just a lot harder.

Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. There will be a formal time limit of one and a half minutes, and I will not be able to call everyone.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I will be quick, in that case. I express my appreciation to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for a very important speech; I am grateful to him. I particularly welcome the points made by him and the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) about the need for better understanding and collaboration in the system, and I echo his call for the national register of deaths to reflect deaths from eating disorders.

I pay tribute to the Cotswold House unit, run by the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust in Marlborough in my constituency, which is a really important in-patient and out-patient unit working with adults. I echo the points, which I think are shared across the Chamber, about the value of NHS units as opposed to operations run by private equity companies, whose work I have real concerns about.

I want to add a couple of points to those made by hon. Members about the very legitimate campaigns of the organisations to which we are all indebted for their work. First, the point about early intervention has been made and I will not repeat it, but we clearly need to invest in more understanding both at GP level and among communities and families, and support people while they are still at home. Secondly, we must ensure we have a better and more adequate transition from children’s to adult services, which is a real issue I have come across in casework.

My final point is about the importance of step-down provision. It is not enough just to get people back to a healthy weight and then leave them to themselves; they need proper support for many months—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for organising this important debate.

I come to this debate through my work with the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention. There is a clear link with eating disorders, which has been drawn to my attention by the charity Eating Distress North East. Up to a third of people with eating disorders have made suicide attempts, and they are 18 times more likely to die by suicide. Measures to prevent this are really important and must be a priority. The suicide prevention strategy does highlight the need to tackle issues for eating disorders, but I know that lots of organisations in the field would like to see more done in that area.

I want to talk about the role of online harms, which are really problematic. Attention has been drawn to particular sites, and I know that the Government will want to work with Ofcom to make regulations effective for these people, but it is also about the impact of less harmful content. We need greater agency for people to control what they see. Saying that they are not interested is not sufficient. AI, of course, presents new issues.

Eating disorders are devastating and on the rise. Eating Distress North East recorded 78% more referrals in 2024-25—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 13th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I certainly will read that report. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Palliative care is really important and needs to be improved. In many cases it makes such a difference, but it is not the solution for everybody. There are the most heartbreaking cases—I have met people in these situations in my constituency—where that form of palliative care would not have made the difference. That is why I support the Bill, and that begins with new clause 13.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if you can assist me as I am at a loss as to what amendment we are discussing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I have no doubt that if the right hon. Member gives the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) a moment, she will address it quickly, because even Members who are contributing do not have long.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

We remain absolutely committed to the mental health investment standard. We have prioritised the expansion of NHS talking therapies and individual placement and support schemes, and provided £26 million of capital funding to open new mental health centres. However, we are not complacent on this issue. My hon. Friend spoke about autism assessments, which is a red light that is flashing on my dashboard. I would be happy to discuss that further with her.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

11. Whether his Department plans to improve integration of counsellors and psychotherapists into the mental health workforce.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

Counsellors and psychotherapists form an integral part of the NHS mental health workforce, delivering support to people with mental ill health across a range of settings in services for both children and young people and adults. We will publish a refreshed NHS long-term workforce plan to ensure that the NHS has the right people in the right places with the right skills to deliver the care that patients need.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Is there a plan to maintain service provision where psychotherapists and counsellors operating in the charity sector have been hit by eye-watering cost increases as a consequence of the national insurance increase?

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I have said in answers to previous questions, and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, there is something of a pattern emerging here: Opposition Members say that they welcome the investment the Government have made, but oppose the revenue-raising measures and refuse to set out whether they would increase taxes or cut services. I still have not heard an answer on that from those Members.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Today, across the UK, 350 young people aged 25 and under will take up smoking. It is a decision that the vast majority will later regret. They will try to quit again and again, but most will not be able to break their addiction. They will suffer strokes, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stillbirth, dementia or asthma as a direct result of smoking. For two in three of those young people, the habit they are beginning today will eventually kill them.

Smoking takes 80,000 lives a year and causes one in four deaths from cancer in England, a hospital admission almost every minute and 100 GP appointments an hour. It is the leading cause of sickness, disability and death in our country. And today, Members of this House can consign it to the history books.

The Bill before the House will raise the legal age of the purchase of tobacco by one year every year, creating the first smokefree generation and, eventually, a smokefree nation. The Bill will enable the Government to extend the current indoor smoking ban to certain outdoor settings, and we will consult on banning smoking outside schools and hospitals and in playgrounds, protecting children and vulnerable people from the harms of second-hand smoke.

The Bill will come down on the vaping industry like a ton of bricks, to prevent a new generation of children and young people from getting hooked on nicotine. Taken together, these measures add up to the most significant public health intervention in a generation. They are a giant leap in this Government’s mission to build a healthy society and, in doing so, they will help to build a more healthy economy too.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Can the Secretary of State imagine the plight of a shop assistant, some decades hence, when a middle-aged or elderly person presents themselves seeking to buy a packet of cigarettes? Is that shop assistant really expected to demand their bone fides?

[Wes Streeting]

I can not only imagine it, but I recently experienced a similar situation. There I was in Barkingside Sainsbury’s one evening, only weeks ago, buying a bottle of wine to have with dinner and, to my surprise, I was asked for my ID. I am afraid it is just a burden that those of us with youthful vim and vigour in our early 40s have to bear, and it is a price I am willing to pay—for good moisturiser. However, there is a serious point. Along with many others that I am sure we will encounter during the passage of the Bill, this is one of the cynical arguments being deployed by the mendacious smoking lobby, which would have us believe that, decades hence, there will be people who are at the margins—one aged 41 and one aged 40, for example—being asked for ID on the sale of cigarettes. The point is that the Bill will create a smokefree generation. Young people growing up in our country today will not be smokers, because we will have stopped the start. We will do everything we can to support adults who are currently smoking, because the vast majority want to break the habit but struggle to do so.

Hospice Funding

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I agree, and will come to that later in my speech.

Demelza receives just 10% of its income from the children’s hospice grant, which ends in March 2025, and just 4% of its income from spot purchases, so 86% of its income must come from fundraising. I am concerned that neither the UK Government nor NHS England has set out whether the children’s hospice grant, which is worth £25 million, will continue beyond 2024-25. The grant is a vital source of funding for children’s hospices. Dependence on the generosity of members of the public to pay for vital healthcare would not be tolerated in other core areas of healthcare such as maternity services, cancer care or A&E. Hospices are the only statutory service that relies on fundraising to keep going, despite end of life care being an essential service that so many of us will need.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

What makes hospices so remarkable is their independence. My fear is that the more one demands that they be funded by the state, that independence will be curtailed and questioned. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) put her finger on the difficulty: the problem is in the difference between the policies of different ICBs. Were they funded centrally by the grants available, as they were during the pandemic, I think it would be much better.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I agree. It is important to point out that most hospices do not want 100% funding from the Government because they need the flexibility to do what they want. Fundraising is a really important part of the local community effort, bringing people together, but when the dependence on fundraising is so vast we might need to intervene to provide extra funding.

End of life care is an essential service that so many of us will need, but the situation is made worse by inflationary pressures and rising demand. We have an excellent ICB in Sussex—NHS Sussex, led by Adam Doyle—which has highlighted that hospices are recognised as having become increasingly fragile in recent years, due to a lack of resilience in their funding model, which is heavily reliant on gifted income alongside NHS grants.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

We are in the process of issuing another bulletin to both GPs and pharmacists on the serious shortage protocols and to make clear the alternatives available. That is a clinical decision. I will certainly look at the issue of Provera because medicines have to tick off a number of criteria to be eligible for the prepayment certificate. I will certainly look into that particular drug on the hon. Lady’s behalf.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

16. What steps he is taking to increase the social care workforce.

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

Social care depends on the skills and compassion of our care workforce. That is why we are investing £250 million in reforming care as a career, with a new care qualification, specialist training courses for experienced care workers and a new career structure to support progression, alongside increased funding for social care, our national recruitment campaign and the care worker visa.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

We need many, many more domiciliary care workers. How will we get them?

[Helen Whately]

My right hon. Friend is right. We have some good news: Skills for Care data shows that home care job vacancies are falling—something I hear when I speak to home care providers. Looking ahead to next winter, I want every local authority to have enough home care on hand. That is why I emphasised the importance of home care when we distributed £600 million of discharge funding to local councils and NHS organisations in April. We are asking all local authorities to plan ahead and book enough home care in advance for this coming winter.