Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for her question. She is right to raise the inequalities at the heart of poor maternity care, as well as failures in services overall. We are taking a number of actions, but on the issue of funding specifically—I think this will become a recurrent theme across a range of issues during this Parliament—the approach that we are taking as a Government is to try to devolve more power, responsibility and resources to the frontline. As we do so, we are removing national ringfences.

I appreciate what the hon. Lady says about the risk. It is important that we, and no doubt Parliament, scrutinise the situation to make sure that outcomes across the board improve and that the focus that this House wants to bring to issues like maternity safety is delivered in practice, but I think we are right to drive at the issue of devolution. Decisions are better taken within communities, close to communities and at a local-system level, but she is right to be vigilant about this issue, and we on this side of the House are absolutely open to challenge. If systems are not acting in the way that we want and it is having an adverse impact, we will reconsider.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Wyre) (Lab)]

11. If he will set out a timeline for responding to the Hughes report, published on 7 February 2024.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)]

We are carefully considering the work undertaken by the Patient Safety Commissioner, which sets out various potential options for redress. I am both a clinician and a Minister who has recently taken on this area, and my hon. Friend will know that this is highly complex work, but it is a complexity that I am willing to step into. It requires input and planning across Government, which takes time. I am certainly committed to taking this issue seriously, and I will return to update my hon. Friend and the House in due course.

[Cat Smith]

I welcome the new Minister to his post. I have been campaigning on this issue for 10 years, and I have a stack of letters and answers to written parliamentary questions that say things like “in due course” and “the Government are considering”. On behalf of a group of people who have been gaslit by the medical profession, will the Minister step up and be the Minister who ensures that these families, who are victims of the sodium valproate scandal, actually see the redress that they absolutely deserve? Will he make sure that they get a meeting with him at the earliest opportunity?

[Dr Ahmed]

I thank my hon. Friend for all her tireless work, campaigning and advocacy on this issue for many years, particularly since the Hughes report was published in February 2024. Like me, she will be sensitive to the fact that we are coming up to the two-year anniversary of that report. It is a call to action for me and the Department to answer the questions that she has been asking for so long. I have a meeting with the Patient Safety Commissioner very shortly, and I am very happy to meet her separately when she wishes.