Giving Every Baby the Best Start in Life

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for securing this debate. The collective case that they made was weighty, and I think there was universal agreement; I certainly did not disagree with anything that was said.

I associate myself with the comments made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park about the importance and the centrality of good health visiting. She also made very interesting points about lockdown and covid that were shared by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, whose statistic that seven in 10 parents feel that they have not had enough support was sobering. That shows the scale of the challenge that we have in building back.

Of course, the right hon. Member has also gifted us her rich report, which we are discussing, in many ways, today. I want to take this opportunity to reiterate in public what I have said to her in private about the Opposition’s support for her. She had real success at the Budget, which we were all heartened by. We know there is more to do, but she is clearly doing something right and, as I say, we will be with her along the way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North made a stark and powerful speech about poverty. She could have changed Newcastle upon Tyne North to Nottingham North—my constituency—and the entire thing would have read across, but particularly the cruelty of pre-ordaining a child’s destiny at their birth.

The hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) talked about turning the strategy into a local plan and putting an emphasis on local authorities or health and wellbeing boards—in my case, I think integrated care systems is the model. I proposed that in a new clause that I tabled to the Health and Care Bill, which the Government were not minded to accept. I hope that we might be able to work together on that, and that we might get something in the Bill to that effect in its remaining stages. I think that would be a very good way to do that.

I pay special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), my predecessor in this role, because so much of our policy is her policy and I have just been carrying on that work. The point she made about the environment was one I had not heard her make before. I am always fearful that children can sometimes grow up in hopeless environments and the future of the planet is one of the things that restricts hope. That is a very important point and we have a responsibility in this place to address it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) made the point that, if in doubt, look at Wales. In many ways, that is very much the way to go.

Previously, and certainly for the last 10 years, the place to start when talking about early intervention and the best start in life was the breakthrough 2011 report on early intervention by my friend and constituency predecessor, Graham Allen. Happily, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire is providing him with some good competition with her report. As we have seen in the debate, that has established a cross-party consensus to make good on this. The report confirms and builds on what we know about how critical the first 1,001 days are.

In my maiden speech four-and-a-half years ago, I talked about similar themes for my community and how these challenges are cyclical, and said that the way to break those cycles is to intervene as early as possible. A healthy pregnancy is very important for mum, but also for the baby’s development. Beyond specific dangers such as smoking, alcohol or drugs, we know that stress can cause challenges for babies. That is an awful lot of pressure on mums, so health visitor support is really important, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park said. The next two years are crucial, too, in setting out how a child’s life is likely to go. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) made important points about adverse childhood experiences, which we know have a lifelong impact. As I say, the case for change is well established, but we have to have concrete things to do and the report and the six action areas effectively laid out that route for us.

I want to briefly address Sure Start. We know that Sure Start prevented hospitalisations, impacted children all through their adolescence, improved mental health, helped particularly in the poorest communities and, of course, made major, long-lasting savings for the NHS. The tragedy is that any savings made by cutting those services will be hoovered up in costs to the NHS. It is dreadful public policy. I say that not to litigate the events of the last 10 years, but because at the moment councils are setting their budgets. Councils in cities such as mine will be making decisions that mean children’s centres will again be lost. So we have not adequately addressed this yet. It was not adequately addressed in the support for local authorities in the Budget. Family hubs are very welcome and I accept the point that they are not a like-for-like replacement, but my point is that we are weakening our approach in this area by filling the bath at the top and then draining it at the bottom. I think that is a big mistake.

I will make a final point on what I consider to be our greatest hurdle in this endeavour: the public finances and the Treasury. This is the sort of spending that we know—the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner said this—benefits future generations. Politically, I think we can get our heads around that. The previous Labour Government showed that we can do that. The growing consensus is that we want to make long-term investments, even if we are not in this place seeing the benefits from them. However, I do not think we have quite got there yet with regard to the Treasury. Clearly, significant progress was made at the Budget—I want that to be recognised—but we need models that, for the Treasury’s purposes of balancing the budget and having good responsible public finances, also recognise that investing now can give returns in a decade. Even if we are not able to get the pound and penny of where that return will be, we know that it will happen. I do not think we are quite there yet and I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that.

The report by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire has set us a real road map. A political consensus is being established around it. However, we now need to know the long-term commitment. On the Labour Benches, we are committed in finance and in public policy terms to make the investments here. The Government showed at the Budget that they are starting to get to that place, but I hope to hear from the Minister that that is for the longer term and not just a one-Budget commitment. The prize is so great for our nation. As a result, our ambition must be great, too.