Baby Loss Awareness Week

Debate between Andy MacNae and Saqib Bhatti

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andy MacNae]

I will come on to the full package of support that is needed, but what the hon. Member raises is indicative of how care is not available when people need it most—we hear that time and again.

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is incredibly generous in giving way and is making an excellent speech. When there is a gap with therapeutic care, there are charities, such as the Lily Mae Foundation in my constituency, that fill it. We have also talked about Sands and Tommy’s—there are lots of charities out there that need support as they do that important work. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should consider more support for them as well?

[Andy MacNae]

Supporting charities is vital; they do so much incredible and brilliant work, and I would encourage any support that could be given. I will now attempt wrapping up and not take any more interventions —my eye has been caught by Madam Deputy Speaker.

The care received after losing a baby stays with a family forever. Kindness, dignity and privacy cannot remove grief, but poor and absent care after loss will deepen trauma and cause long-term harm. To be clear, good bereavement support must include fathers. Only 29% of services offered basic assessments to fathers in 2024—that is simply not good enough. Services must recognise that fathers and partners will also grieve.

We need to do better, and we can. We know what needs to be done. The national bereavement care pathway already exists and covers miscarriage, termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly, stillbirth, neonatal death and sudden unexpected death in infancy. Every NHS trust in England has voluntarily adopted it, but implementation remains inconsistent because services have not always received the resources or prioritisation needed to deliver it. We must address that and require that all bereavement pathways are considered within NHS planning and resourcing.

Effective bereavement support should be integral to all maternity services, with identified bereavement leads. All staff who may care for bereaved families should have access to appropriate bereavement training during working hours, and they must themselves receive the support they need in dealing with the losses they have seen. When loss has occurred, every family should have a private space to spend time with their baby, make memories and begin to process what has happened. Specialist bereavement support services should be there to support them through personalised support plans, and in the longer term they need to have specialist mental health support available to respond as trauma manifests, even if that is years later.

The question is no longer whether maternity and neonatal services require fundamental change—report after report has answered that. The question is whether we have the determination to deliver it. We need targets to reduce baby deaths and eliminate inequalities by 2035, supported by good data to show that policy is working. We need a commissioner with the independence and authority to hold the system to account. We need care that sees and listens to every family as individuals. We need to give staff the training, time, capacity and protection they need to provide safe care and to speak up when something is wrong. And when a baby dies, we need compassionate, high-quality bereavement care for every family.

Last year, I said that we had the opportunity and obligation to act. That obligation is now greater, because the actions we must take have been laid before us. Families have heard promises before, they have watched recommendations accepted, and they have been assured that lessons would be learned, only to see another family experience the same failures. We owe them something different now, not another expression of good intent, but evidence that care is changing and lives are being saved.

Bereaved families have given us their testimony, time and trust. They should not be asked to return in another year—or in another decade—to tell us that the same failures continue. We cannot bring back the babies who have died, but we can honour their short lives through what we do next.