National Breastfeeding Week
Helen Hayes Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing this important debate.
I breastfed my two children, who are now aged nine and six. I was fortunate because that experience was relatively straightforward, but it was not without issues or a need for support. A few days after having my first baby, I remember experiencing toothache and wondering, in my slightly dazed state as a new mother, how toothache could possibly be a post-natal complication. I then realised that I had given myself toothache from clamping my teeth so hard because of the pain every time my baby fed. Those first few days were difficult and painful, and there were tears, but once I had mastered it, it was a hugely rewarding experience. My second baby could not tolerate cow’s milk, which made the transition to any type of formula very difficult, but I was glad to continue breastfeeding her for much longer because it benefited her health enormously. The health benefits of breastfeeding for mothers and babies are well established and proven, as rehearsed by the hon. Lady.
I want to highlight a pressing issue in my constituency: the potential loss of the breastfeeding cafés that operate in Sure Start centres in my constituency, in Streatham and in Camberwell and Peckham. Those cafés, which are resourced by experienced midwives from King’s College hospital, are a vital resource for new nursing mothers. They are under threat because the support from King’s College hospital is going to be withdrawn, due to the midwives who staff the cafés being needed on the labour wards. The hospital is otherwise unable to recruit to a series of vacancies in its midwifery department.
This is a grave situation. The breastfeeding cafés operate in Sure Start centre locations where many mothers are deprived, successfully extending the reach to those areas and increasing breastfeeding rates there. The benefits of addressing nutritional disadvantages, helping those babies to be healthier and getting them off to a good start in life are vital. I am concerned that a shortage of midwives elsewhere in the health service is putting those breastfeeding cafés at risk. I will certainly raise the issue with King’s College hospital when I meet staff there on Friday, and I will talk to the local authorities in Lambeth and Southwark about whether there is any way that those vital services could be continued.
I call on the Minister to help us in that endeavour and to help make additional resources available, so that experienced midwives can continue to staff breastfeeding cafés in my constituency and beyond. Extending breast- feeding to deprived communities in particular will save the health service money in the long term, so resourcing this service is money spent positively and spent well.
NHS Success Regime
Helen Hayes Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Ben Gummer
My hon. Friend makes the point better than I did. How do we sort these problems out using the local knowledge that he has just demonstrated rather than having a Minister in Whitehall with a map thinking that he or she can make the decision themselves? The success regime seeks to harness that local knowledge and the local solutions.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is simply not acceptable that an announcement of this magnitude should have been made without first being debated in this House. As I understand it, the success regime applies to a number of areas of the country but not to London. My local hospital, King’s College hospital, has a deficit well in excess of £40 million. It is nigh on impossible in parts of the constituency to see a GP when people need to. We have a crisis in the NHS across the country. What is the comprehensive plan to address that? We need that rather than a piecemeal intervention in only parts of the country.
Ben Gummer
I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. She will not know that there was an Adjournment debate at the end of the last Parliament on precisely this issue. I invite her to seek such a debate if she wishes to discuss local issues with me or other Ministers. The success regime has been devised by Simon Stevens and NHS England. It will be clinically led, fulfilling our desire to see the NHS led by doctors, not Whitehall bureaucrats.