Maternal Mental Health

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing the debate, because the three quarters of a million women who have given birth during this pandemic have not only experienced all the challenges that every woman experiences when they give birth, but have had those problems magnified. Other Members have already set out issues around isolation, anxiety and the need for proper, professional support, as identified by the excellent piece of work done by the Digital Engagement Team for the hon. Lady, which all of us who have been new mums can really relate to. I can only imagine how much more these issues can affect people when they have no family members to call on and no mothers’ group to allow them to pick up personal experience from others who have gone through it before them.

Outside of the pandemic, around one in five women experience perinatal mental health problems, which impact not only them but their children, and as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, that can cost the economy some £8 billion every year. I will add to the debate the conditions that create a higher likelihood of mental health problems emerging in the first place, which according to research is particularly stressful life events.

We know that, during the pandemic, people have been highly anxious—far more than they might have been otherwise. Indeed, some research suggests that around three in four pregnant women have had significant anxiety, and up to 40% have experienced depression. One of the biggest anxieties for any new parent has to be money—finance, income; making sure that they can care for their new family. Most families now have two working parents, and families depend on both incomes, so the fact that more than 50,000 pregnant women a year suffer discrimination that leaves them with no option but to leave their job should sound alarm bells, not only for our economy, but for its potential to trigger mental health problems, depression or anxiety.

Work by organisations such as Maternity Action and Pregnant Then Screwed shows worrying increases in reports of pregnant women losing their jobs during the pandemic, and we know that more women have been impacted, in terms of job loss, during the pandemic than in other similar economic events. The reported figure of 50,000 pregnant women each and every year leaving their jobs is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, because as well as those reporting leaving their jobs, there will be many more who are silenced from speaking out by non-disclosure agreements.

My right hon. Friend the Minister has done so much to support new mothers, but some women are still let down in the workplace, so as part of this debate I urge her to consider employment policies too, particularly given the impact of coronavirus on women’s employment. No matter how good my right hon. Friend is at her job, in terms of putting support in place, if pregnant women are concerned about losing their jobs, even if they do not do so—and being pushed out of work is not uncommon in the workplace when women become pregnant—the job of the Department of Health and Social Care will be severely undermined if these issues are not addressed.

Other countries have looked at this closely, and I believe we can learn from their experiences. Germany, with a similar economy to ours, prohibits making pregnant women and new mums redundant, for the good of women, their children and their families. I have put into a ten-minute rule Bill the idea of adopting the German laws here in the UK, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will look at it to see whether she could lend it her support.

My final point is that mental health problems on the arrival of a child do not just impact women. Up to one in four fathers may experience mental health problems in the year after the birth of a child. It can be difficult for fathers to manage the transition, and we need to ensure that support is there. In other countries, shared parental leave policies, on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, have been proven to help fathers with that transition. Will the Minister look at why we are still awaiting action following the review in the UK of this policy, which would explicitly help fathers to tackle these difficult issues?

My hon. Friend the Minister has done so much, but she needs her colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to do more. It is no good saying that we have good maternity protections when the Government know that probably 50,000 women a year lose their job because of how they are treated in the workplace. I ask the Minister to speak to her colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to look at effective broader policies impacting on pregnant women at work, because one of the most effective maternal health policies that the Government could adopt is stopping women being made redundant in the first place.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Because Members have gone on beyond five minutes, I have to reduce the time limit again, otherwise not everybody will get in. The time limit is now four minutes.