Baby Loss Awareness Week

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

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

This week last year, I had multiple pulmonary emboli only a few weeks after giving birth. I am very grateful to Dr Laura Stephens, who saved my life and then was punished for ordering the test which found the emboli. Blood clots are the No. 1 cause of death in pregnant and post-partum women, and yet there is not a word about their risk in any pregnancy pack given out in this country. The national action plan will fail if it does not tackle blood clots as the No. 1 cause of maternal deaths. Will the Health Secretary kindly meet me and work with me, so that together we can save lives?

[James Murray]

I thank the hon. Lady for sharing her experience and raising the importance of this issue for the benefit of maternity services more widely. I am very happy for myself or one of the ministerial team to meet her to discuss this in detail, because it is very important that that is part of the national action plan and our wider response.

GP Contract

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for his constituents. I am not familiar with the details of the case that he mentions, but I would be happy to look into it; if he would write to me, we can take that further.

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

Local doctors tell me that they were hoping the new contract would be focused on family medicine, with detail about the 10-year plan and neighbourhood health centres that the Minister has just touched on. I ask when the Secretary of State will be releasing the detail of the neighbourhood contract, which is really vital as I work with local health authorities to try to secure a second practice for residents in Stamford.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The guidance on neighbourhood health will be published very soon indeed; it is almost complete, and is coming soon. We recognise that general practice will be right at the heart of neighbourhood health, so we have to ensure a single neighbourhood provider contract and a multi-neighbourhood provider contract that are aligned with the best value that we can deliver, both for the taxpayer and in terms of patient outcomes. We will also be consulting on the single neighbourhood provider and multi-neighbourhood provider, with the consultation process starting some time after the overarching neighbourhood guidance, which is coming out very soon.

Baby Loss and Safe Staffing in Maternity Care

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jill Mortimer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Sadly, that is not a matter for me as I am not a Minister; it will be for the Minister to reply to that.

Will the Minister look at training more bereavement midwives? Sands has developed the national bereavement care pathway, which provides the framework and tools to ensure that all health professionals are adequately equipped to provide the standard of bereavement care so sorely needed during the immediate aftermath of pregnancy or baby loss. That would prevent women like me, 30 years on, from hearing those same lines; health professionals would understand that, kind as they are meant, they do not help in the long term.

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

I thank my very good friend for her work on this issue. On the point about discrepancy, in my constituency a baby died—it was negligence—and the mother was sent home with four leaflets and never contacted again by the hospital. By contrast, my very best friend lost her baby at nine months in January—as Members can see, we all grieve when we lose someone that close to us—and she had phenomenal care from Tommy’s. Will my hon. Friend press the Minister to do all she can to ensure that there are national guidelines against which the NHS is held to account, monitored and graded for how it provides bereavement care?

[Jill Mortimer]

I thank my hon. Friend; she must not apologise because obviously this issue is very close to us all. We feel very deeply for all mothers who lose. That is one thing that I wish to ask the Minister to do: will she ask the Government to mandate the national bereavement care pathway so that it is nationwide? Although 105 trusts are already formally committed to rolling it out, they need the additional funding to fully implement all the standards of the NBCP. It is no good just taking part of it; we need it all in place and all midwives need to have that training. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that all trusts can implement this vital support service?

Those are the three big asks. I know they are big, that times are not great and that there are not funds, but this is such a vital policy area and so much long-term pain could be caused. I thank Members for their time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

It is a perfectly fair point that there is a difference of approach in the different countries of the great United Kingdom, and I utterly agree that if someone lives in the United Kingdom, they should have a consistency of approach. There should be a coming together of the various professional boards to drive forward consistent standards. I will give one specific example.

[Alicia Kearns]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend will take my time, but I will give way very briefly.

[Alicia Kearns]

Before it even gets to treatment, a big problem is the way we assess the safety of a pregnancy, which is the same as it was in the 1960s. It has not changed. There is a new AI programme—the Tommy’s app—that could be rolled out across the entire country to ensure that technology is used to assess the vulnerability of pregnancies. Does my hon. Friend agree that that sort of tool is what we need rolled out to ensure consistency of diagnosis and safety in pregnancy, and not just treatment?

Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme: Covid-19

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, who puts it very well. It is important not just that we have the right scheme—I do not believe yet that we do—but that, as he says, when that scheme is in place, it pays out quickly. It is clear that the scheme in place at the moment is not doing that, and it simply is not acceptable or feasible for families in severe financial distress to have to wait the length of time that they are being asked to wait. And the example that he gives is a good one.

That example is also important in another respect, because there is something else that the Government need to do. In relation to those cases where vaccine injury is fatal, as was the case with my hon. Friend’s constituent, the Government need to protect entitlement to benefits, as they have done with other similar schemes but which they are currently not doing in relation to payouts under the VDPS. Whether that is universal credit or some other benefit, that post-death entitlement needs to be protected in a way not currently allowed by the law.

The second problem with the VDPS is that it requires a 60% level of disablement. The first thing to say about that is that the percentage of disablement can be hard to quantify in these cases, as Jamie Scott’s consultant made clear in her opinion. However, the second thing to say about it is that 60% is a very high bar. There can be significant injury or disablement that does not meet that threshold but is still life-changing. The VDPS is all or nothing: it pays out the full amount or nothing at all. In other words, someone adjudged to be 59% disabled as a direct result of vaccination would receive no compensation at all under the scheme. That cannot be right.

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

Before my right hon. and learned Friend gets to the payment system, I want to raise the issue of support. My constituent Charlotte was a 39-year-old healthy mother of three children. I am furious and appalled after having had to approach three Government Ministers, two NHS trusts and the local GP to ask if someone can help her with the myriad health conditions she has contracted as a result of doing the right and getting her vaccination. She has not got long covid; the long covid units and clinics do not want to talk to her. No one wants to support her. Currently, she is going to Germany for treatment. Her life has been destroyed, she cannot be a mother and yet not one Minister or anyone else seems to want to make sure that this very small cohort of people have a meaningful pathway to care and support.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we need to get a grip regarding this very small number of people and that Ministers need to reach out individually to every single family in this situation, make sure that they know what support they can receive, ensure that there is a care pathway, and help MPs to help their constituents?

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

Yes. Again, I agree with my hon. Friend, who puts her point very powerfully. It seems to me that there is an opportunity for the Government to do better, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister and her colleagues will take up that opportunity.

We are talking about people in very great need who have done the right thing. There is no fault whatsoever on their part, and the Government are best served by helping them, not just for individual reasons but collectively because of the impact that will have on Government policy. I will come back to that point. As my hon. Friend says, the level of support currently on offer is not adequate.

The third problem with the VDPS is that payouts under it are limited to £120,000. That may sound like a lot of money, but it is certainly not enough to compensate for more serious injury and loss of earnings and amenity over lifetimes, especially for people in the 40s, like Jamie Scott, who are disproportionately highly represented among the figures of those who have suffered vaccine-related injury. I appreciate that the Minister will say that the VDPS is not designed to be full compensation but an additional payment that does not prejudice a right to pursue damages through the courts. I want to explore that argument for a moment.

The fact that VDPS payments cannot and will not constitute full compensation in many of these cases makes legal action almost inevitable. When those cases are brought, they are likely to be brought against the Government, because of the perfectly sensible indemnities given by the Government to those firms that have produced the vaccines. The cases brought will either be won by those injured or lost. If they are won, the Government will be paying full compensation for injury, with additional and avoidable legal costs added. If they are lost, people who have suffered for doing the right thing, the thing that the Government asked them to do, will not be compensated for hardship they have suffered through no fault of their own.

Win or lose, the Government should not want those cases litigated. It will seem either that compensation is being dragged out of the Government or that it is being denied in what the public are likely to think are highly deserving cases. Worse still, those cases will put incidents of vaccine injury in the spotlight. We are rightly proud of the widespread take-up in what has been a successful and ongoing vaccination programme, but that take-up relies on public confidence in the covid-19 vaccine programme—confidence that is itself based on the safety of the vaccine. It is, let us be clear, overwhelmingly safe, but it is not universally safe. No vaccine is. The cases we are discussing today demonstrate that.

The Government need people to know, surely, that if they are in the tiny minority of those injured by the vaccine that they are being urged to take, they will be looked after. If people cannot be confident of that and see that as they witness those cases being litigated, it is likely to damage uptake of the vaccine. Of course, we must recognise that the Government may need to pursue mass vaccination again in the future. It seems to me that the Government should properly compensate those injured by covid-19 vaccines for reasons of policy as well as those of morality.

The question that follows is: can it be done better? You would, of course, expect me to say, Sir Edward, that yes, it can. These are relatively few cases in number, which means that the financial liability for Government is relatively delimited. There are domestic precedents we can follow—for example, the Thalidomide Trust. There are international examples that we can look to as well. The comparable scheme in Canada is also a no-fault scheme that compensates for

“severe, life-threatening or life-altering injury that may require… hospitalization or a prolongation of existing hospitalization, and results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or where the outcome is a congenital malformation or death.”

Significantly, there is no percentage disablement requirement and, crucially, no upper limit to the level of compensation that may be awarded.

In Australia, the scheme covers

“a clinical condition or administration related injury…most likely as a result of receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine”,

involving hospital treatment and resulting in at least $1,000-worth of losses. Again, it is a no-fault scheme but it has no percentage disablement requirement and no upper limit to the compensation amount.

Perhaps most strikingly, the no-fault compensation scheme attached to the COVAX programme, whereby countries including the United Kingdom make vaccines available to developing countries, can award up to 12 times the GDP per capita of the claimant’s country. In the UK, that would mean an upper limit roughly three times that of the VDPS. That means that the UK Government are funding better vaccine injury compensation for people in other countries than they are for people in our own. That surely is not a defensible position.

The Government must do better, and soon. They must either reform the VDPS in order to make it more similar to the best international comparators, or find a way to settle the inevitable legal actions in these cases swiftly and fairly. They must surely do so in their own interests, because in the end, the cost to Government of failing to compensate those who have acted on Government policy will be higher than the cost of compensating them.

It is because I support vaccination that I want confidence in vaccination to be maintained. Mostly, the Government should act because the people we are talking about did the right thing at the behest of their Government. Their Government now need to do the right thing by them.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

We are here to discuss the vaccine damage payment scheme of 1979. My interest is as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on vaccinations for all, so it is clear that I am absolutely and utterly pro-vaccination.

We can be grateful for just how rare significant side effects or damage are when it comes to vaccines as a whole. However, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) has said, if we are to maintain confidence not only in vaccination in principle but in further covid-19 vaccines, it is important that people feel secure and supported and that they are not hearing horror stories of people who have been hurt in some way by the vaccine and then just left stranded. It is vital that we do that, or we will see a rise in vaccine scepticism and vaccine hesitancy, and that will be manipulated exactly as we have seen over the last couple of years.

[Alicia Kearns]

As a former civil servant, I believe that the case load is so small that it is not unfair to expect Ministers to look at each case individually. They have the capacity and are capable. The purpose of vaccination is to protect not just ourselves but others around us, and many who have had negative consequences acted in the national interest and to protect their loved ones. They deserve the bare minimum of a Minister looking individually, case by case, to see what support they need and whether they deserve the vaccine payment or some exceptional support. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Dr Whitford]

I totally agree. The Government’s response to the petition talks of 174 cases. When I was a breast cancer surgeon and there was the scandal about PIP implants, which I knew we had never used, I still had to go through every single breast reconstruction I had done in a period of 17 years in order to absolutely verify that that was not the implant. It is absolutely possible with such numbers.

At the moment, only 11 cases have been settled. Only 2% in recent years have been successful. Whenever any kind of scheme has only that kind of return, it has to be looked at. As has been said, it is a long wait and people are left not able to work or they have family pressures and receive no support. Who is deciding the 60% disablement? As has been said, it is an absolute cut-off. Even the maximum payment has not been reviewed since 2010 and it would not cover anyone for 20 or 25 years of lost earnings and ability.

The Government say it is not compensation. I think that a no-fault scheme is absolutely right. I raised this issue with the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) when he was Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, in December 2020, and said that if the Government were removing liability from pharmaceutical firms, they had to step in and replace them. I would like to see the VDPS improved for all vaccine users, but the covid-19 vaccine is a specific case where urgent action is needed and where it is even more important to get financial support.

We heard about cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and how catastrophic, but thankfully rare, it is. People have also had micro-thrombosis and an array of autoimmune responses to the vaccines. My constituent, who does not want to be named, suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is now recognised and mentioned in association with the vaccines. It is a neurological condition that has caused him to have partial facial paralysis and problems with balance. That may sound minor, but he worked at heights in a majorly physical job and has not been able to work since spring 2020. He, and people like him, are terrified of the 60% disablement. He imagines that when he walks into a room, regardless of his facial appearance or his balance, people will think, “Well, you’re not really that bad”, but he cannot do the job he was doing before.

It is vital that we take these cases out of the VDPS, deal with them quickly to ensure confidence in the covid-19 vaccine, and take the time to change the VDPS to make it responsive, quick and something that the public believe in. In total, there are currently only just over 2,000 cases, which is not an overwhelming number to work through if it means that we maintain confidence in vaccines and the benefits they bring to all age groups, throughout our lives, against multiple diseases.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The Government have committed to giving NHS workers a pay rise this year, on top of last year’s 3% rise when pay was frozen in the wider public sector. The independent pay review bodies base their recommendations on a number of factors, which include but are not limited to the cost of living and inflation, as well as the economic context and issues such as recruitment and retention. The Government are considering carefully the content of the pay review body’s report and will respond shortly.

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

I want to raise the case of 10-year-old Lucas from my constituency, who has a rare form of cancer called DIPG—diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. The only drug that would prolong his life has to come from Germany. The family have raised the funds to pay for the drug, but they are now being charged £530 per shipment in import duty. Will my right hon. Friend please help me to lobby the Treasury for an exemption, because it should not be making money off the back of this poor boy’s lasting difficulties?

[Steve Barclay]

As my hon. Friend recognises in her question, that is a decision for Her Majesty’s Treasury, but I am very happy to highlight with the Chancellor the case that she brings to the attention of the House.

Health and Care Bill

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. On the duties of integrated care boards, he knows that one of my grave concerns about health inequalities relates to rural settings. In Rutland, our citizens receive care in Peterborough, Stamford, Kettering, Corby, Leicester and sometimes even beyond. The big problem at the moment is that their health records are not shared across those different clinical commissioning groups, leading to big problems with them getting the care and support they need. Will ICBs be able to help us to overcome these issues? I have been lobbying the Department of Health and Social Care for months to help us sort out this problem.

[Edward Argar]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that under the changes we are putting in place through the integrated care systems, ICBs will continue to be able to commission services and to send patients to hospitals outside the ICS area. They will also be obliged to co-operate and work with other organisations in the patient’s best interests. We are setting this alongside the broader work that we are doing in the Department on the interoperability of data. I hope that that has reassured her to a degree.

We are also committed to supporting research, and I ask the House to agree to Lords amendments 6, 15, 26 and 28, which further embed research and provide increased clarity, transparency and oversight in respect of ICBs, NHS England and the Secretary of State’s research duties.

Ockenden Report

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can assure my hon. Friend that there have already been a number of changes in the CQC’s approach, but I cannot give an assurance that it has changed enough, because this report has only just been published and it is important to me to follow through and ensure that, where relevant, the independent regulators are also making the changes set out in the report. To respond to an earlier question from the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), she was right to suggest that there should be an update from Ministers on progress following this report, and I will ensure that that happens. That picks up on this question about the CQC as well.

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

This House is united in our heartache over the lives lost and the lives destroyed, and over the women who were silenced and told that birthing had happened for centuries so they should shut up, or that it should happen as though in some sort of movie. I am afraid that, as an MP, I have concluded that NHS bureaucracy has a systemic problem of sexism, and I ask the Secretary of State to keep an eye on this nationally. I remember, after 36 hours of labour, being rushed to the operating theatre and being denied a C-section, then being rushed back an hour later and having a C-section, but only because my husband had noticed that my son’s heart rate had plummeted to almost non-existent. We must also prevent the unforgivable and unscientific locking out of loved ones across all health services. It compromises care and it is still happening in hospitals around the country across different types of care.

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend for saying what she has said in the way that she did, and also for talking about her own experience. She is absolutely right to emphasise the point that the NHS is there to care for anyone regardless of their gender, but when it comes to women in particular, I hope she agrees that this is precisely why the Government are right to want to set out—as we will do shortly and for the first time ever—a detailed women’s health strategy.

Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I know my hon. Friend the Minister is about to talk about the types of support available, so I want to make my pitch at this point: I have a wonderful 38-year-old female constituent, a mother of three, who after her first shot of AstraZeneca has had horrendous, life-limiting conditions. The NHS seems to have closed its doors to her: for 10 months she has been asking for help, but no one will give it. She has had to go to Germany to get the specialist blood analysis she needs. So can the Minister kindly say what medical ongoing support and pathways the NHS has created within its support specifically to ensure that people like my constituent get the help they so desperately need to live healthier, happier lives?

[Maria Caulfield]

If my hon. Friend contacts me after the debate I will be happy to find out what specific help is available for her constituent in the local area. But we do have a robust safety mechanism in place, dealing with not just covid vaccines but all medicines, and the VDPS was established in 1979 as a one-off, tax-free payment, with the aim of easing the financial burden on individuals when, on very rare occasions, vaccination has caused severe disablement.

For the specific groups of vaccines that are covid-related, the Prime Minister announced on 21 September 2021 that responsibility for the operation of the VDPS would transfer from the Department for Work and Pensions to us in the Department of Health and Social Care on 1 November 2021. We are picking up that mantle and are working at pace to address the many issues my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has raised.

Covid-19 Update

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

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

As my right hon. Friend knows, despite my enormous respect for him, I voted against the introduction of covid passports before Christmas. I maintain my view that they are not effective. Will he please commit to dropping domestic certification at the earliest possible opportunity? Will he also make clear today from the Dispatch Box to NHS trusts up and down this country that he will not stand for the pandemic of arbitrary discrimination we are seeing against pregnant women and their partners, and parents who want to be with their children on paediatric wards but are being prevented by trusts in an illogical and unscientific manner from being with them to look after and advocate for them?

[Sajid Javid]

First, I agree with every word my hon. Friend says about pregnant women. That is a message that has been reinforced to every NHS trust. I thank her for how she has campaigned on this issue and brought it to light, because that is making a difference. On the issue she raised about domestic certification, I share her instinctive discomfort, and I assure her and the House that as far as I am concerned we will not be keeping domestic certification in place a moment longer than absolutely necessary.