Health Bill

Debate between Chris Hinchliff and Caroline Dinenage

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the fantastic work that he did as shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and he is absolutely right. We really need the full response to the Fuller report in order to implement not only changes to mortuaries, but all the other amendments that it recommended.

New clause 41 would place a duty on the Human Tissue Authority to establish and maintain a register of every business brought within its oversight, with how that register operates set by regulation, so that for the first time a grieving family could check, before they hand over the body of a loved one, whether the business in front of them is properly overseen. I recognise that the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) has tabled new clause 42 on a new, bespoke freestanding regulator. Both new clauses would fix the same issue, and either will do.

The key thing is that this is a moment for the Government to seize, not resist. Ministers have already said that, in principle, they agree with what new clause 41 would require of them. Every trade body agrees. Every family who has been failed agrees. Every Member from across the House who signed our letter agrees. It feels like the Government agree, so I ask the Minister to tell the House exactly when a statutory scheme will be brought forward by the Department of Health and Social Care, and to set out the timetable for implementation.

None of us is comfortable dwelling on our own mortality, which is exactly why the funeral sector has gone on for so long without proper scrutiny. It is a truism—we hear it all the time—that funerals are for the living; they are for families to say goodbye to their loved ones with dignity. They should be able to grieve without the added horror of questioning whether the body they buried was the right one, or whether the ashes they scattered belonged to the right person. Robert Bush’s sentencing should be the last time that this House has to debate such a gruesome case, but it will not be unless the Government push ahead to close this regulatory black hole.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I am sure that many Members from across the House are aware of the campaign in memory of Hugh Menai-Davis, the son of my constituents Ceri and Frances who tragically passed away at the age of just six. As part of that campaign, the amendments that I have tabled to the Bill are designed to support families at the most difficult time imaginable.

Our national health service and welfare state have changed and evolved over almost a century, and we should always keep a close watch on how faithfully they remain connected to their founding principles. Support “from the cradle to the grave” should not a dusty slogan; it must be a constant aspiration. Wherever gaps or shortcoming are identified, we must address them.

It should concern us all that support for parents of seriously ill children is one such gap. When a child becomes seriously ill, the NHS mobilises around the child, quite rightly, but parents must mobilise around everything else—getting to work and hospital appointments, looking after other children, managing existing caring responsibilities, and somehow keeping on top of bills, rent or mortgages that do not stop when a child becomes ill. When all of this takes place alongside the fear that their child may die, the pressure on families is near impossible to bear.