Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill

David Johnston Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 20th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

May I be the final Back-Bench Member to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for getting his Bill to this stage? I also pay tribute to Bliss for all the brilliant work it has done not just in this area but on a whole range of campaigns relating to it. I am biased because I used to run charities, but they play such an important role in pushing us to understand and, in turn, legislate on issues that perhaps we would not think about in the daily rush of this place. It takes a lot of work, and it does not happen just like that. Those charities have to push for months and years—sometimes even longer. Bliss has done a brilliant job in this case.

I do not have children, but, as it happens, my little sister was seven weeks premature, so I have some sense of what a worrying, stressful time that is. I was old enough to feel that as a child, and it was much worse for my mum and dad. As my sister came out that early—it had to be done in an emergency—she was in an incubator. She weighed 4 lb 4 oz. Everybody kept saying, “She weighs two bags of sugar.” I checked yesterday and that is correct—it is exactly two bags of sugar. During that time in the incubator, she ripped her breathing tube out at least twice. She did not have any sense of what she was doing, but she ripped out this vital thing that was trying to keep her alive and get her to a healthier position. She will not thank me for saying that that may have been an indication of the personality she was going to have as an adult—[Laughter.] No, we are very close. Although I do not have children, one does not need them to understand how completely obvious it is that this Bill is so important and why the hon. Gentleman has done such a good job.

In preparing for this debate, I read the statistic that in the Government’s consultation 99% of people supported the statutory leave and pay we are bringing in here. That is the sort of figure we hear from a dictator when they are giving themselves more power or installing themselves for life. They say, “Look, 99% of my people voted for me to be the leader forever.” I am happy to give way to anyone who has heard of anything like this before, but I have never heard of a Government consultation where 99% of people were in favour of something. That is why this move is such a no-brainer.

I was sad to read the study by Bliss about the parents who had got into financial difficulty as a result of this period in their lives. They had had money worries; often, they had taken on debt. It goes without saying that this situation has had an impact on mental health; I suspect the real figure is 100%, but 80% at least admitted that it had had an impact on their mental health. Although this measure is the morally right thing to do, we also have to see this from the point of view of employers. They are not going to get the best from someone who has a baby in neonatal care, because that is, of course, going to be their No.1 priority.

A bigger point is involved here: without this important Bill, debt and mental health issues would carry on for people as a result of these situations, and those two things have a big impact on people’s relationships and, in turn, the raising of their child. We know that when certain big things are going on in someone’s home they can create big conflicts and can lead to relationship breakdown. Just having debt and mental health issues in their house can affect a child’s development, as of course do things such as low birth weight. This Bill is therefore part of a broader approach that we have to take to the raising of children and the importance of parenting and of early years. Too often, this is one of these things we just leave people to get on with; the view is, “It will come naturally to you. We will just leave you.” We should be doing a range of things better to help parents in the early years with their children, right from birth.

So I am very pleased to support the Bill, which complements some of the other things the Government done on shared parental leave and so on. We know that we have further to go and that there are some big disparities in the care that certain families—ethnic minority families and those on low incomes—are receiving compared with others. Unfortunately, a couple of my constituents have been affected by the issues at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which Donna Ockenden is currently looking at; sadly, they lost their daughter, Wynter. So we know we have huge disparities here, but in the Government’s women’s health strategy we have exactly the right ambition—we are not there yet—to try to make this country the best place to give birth in. This Bill is an important component in helping us try to get there.