Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

David Reed Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on infant feeding and inequalities, and I also sit on the advisory board for the 1001 Critical Days Foundation. I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for bringing the Bill to the House and giving us all an opportunity to wax lyrical about babies. We get fewer emails from babies than other constituents we represent, which is why it is so important that the Members who have chosen to be here are taking the opportunity to speak up for the voiceless.

Let me take this opportunity to welcome a new baby into my family. I have a new nephew—my first nephew. His name is Raven and he was born eight days ago; he was born with a thick shock of jet black hair, so he clearly knew what his name was going to be. He is wonderful and we all love him dearly already, including my two children, who are delighted to have a cousin to steer down the wrong path.

As the 1001 Critical Days Foundation has made clear through its campaigning and work on the Bill, a baby’s development until the age of two is vital. Failing to provide adequate support for parents and babies at this time can leave individuals and families chasing their tails in the future, trying to make up for issues that occurred during this crucial period. Investment in infants’ health and care pays dividends for society, improving health and educational outcomes, and reducing inequality. It is for that reason that I absolutely support what the Bill is trying to achieve: putting support in the early years on a statutory footing and ensuring a health check of early years support by the Secretary of State at regular intervals.

As the Chair of the Education Committee said, there is an old adage: “It takes a village.” But if a new parent cannot access services in their local area, how are they meant to find their village? I was lucky when I had my children—the first one nearly 12 years ago—to find my village. I attended a weekly breastfeeding support group called Milk, where we could talk freely and openly about the challenges, understand why our babies’ poo was a funny colour, and get advice about combination feeding, introducing solids or returning to work.

At that group, we also learnt about developmental leaps, which I do not remember a midwife or a health visitor ever telling me about when my child was born. I could not understand why I put to bed a lovely calm child, and then a demon woke up and was so hard to soothe for three or four days. When I went to that group, the parents who were a month or two ahead of me said, “Are you sure they are not having a developmental leap? It could be that they are learning new things, and that is why they are struggling to sleep, or they are unregulated, or their pattern has moved around.” It was so helpful.

There was an area for the older children to play. We all enjoyed a cup of tea, something that was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh). We weighed our babies, and we talked about the various methods we all adopted to remember what side we last fed our baby on. The women I met at that group are still my friends today, and they have made my life as a mother better, more supported and brighter. We also went to a baby movers group every Friday morning, where we shook our beanbags, threw scarves over our children and sang songs that still randomly appear in my head when I cannot sleep at 11 o’clock at night.

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

The hon. Lady had a fantastic Adjournment debate nearly a year ago on breastfeeding support. My wife and I are now 384 days into having our first child. We have an organisation in Exmouth called Bosom Buddies, which is run by a fantastic lady called Jodie Wilkerson. She pretty much does it for free, and is constantly trying to get funding. I remember a point that the hon. Lady raised in that debate about breastfeeding support being a postcode lottery. Does she agree that as the Bill goes through the House, the Government need to look at supporting those organisations, which have given so much support to my wife, the hon. Lady and so many women around the country?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and for supporting that Adjournment debate. Every community should have a Jodie; mine was a Julie, and she was constantly chasing funding to keep Milk alive. When my daughter was born, five years after my son, that Milk group, which I had relied on so heavily, was now being run out of a broom cupboard. It was by appointment only, and parents could not take their older children along. The whole thing had just crumbled, so I feared for those coming after me who would not be able to find their village.

Six months after my daughter was born, the pandemic hit. Her 12-month health visitor review was done on Zoom, and my daughter was not even in the room with me. The baby movers classes that I had loved so much with my son ceased to exist, so I ended up running them on Facebook Live—I would message everybody at 10 o’clock and say, “I’m going to go live in half an hour, and we’re all going to shake our beanbag together in our own lounges.” The local children and family centre in Chichester never reopened in the same way after the pandemic, and the children and family centre in Selsey—a coastal community in my constituency—is now permanently closed.

The clearest example of the effectiveness of early support and intervention, as cited by many hon. Members across the House today, was Sure Start. Last May, that service was described in a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as having had an “overwhelmingly positive” effect, with the benefit estimated to be over £2 in societal value for every £1 spent. However, when budgets were tightened during austerity, it was services such as Sure Start that were cut to the bone. The provisions in this Bill are so important because they add statutory foundations, assessments and accountability to protect infant support services for the future.

This Bill should allow Parliament to recognise the importance of services such as feeding support, to ensure that provision is maintained and services are improved. The impact is stark, especially when it comes to infant feeding. Through the work of the APPG for infant feeding and inequalities, I had the privilege of hosting the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative in Parliament last year for the launch of its 2024 report, which was looking at breastfeeding in the UK against metrics measuring other countries. The key takeaway from that report is that the UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Importantly, however, the data also shows that the majority of mothers do set out to breastfeed; despite this, by six to eight weeks, around 70% of babies in the UK receive some formula, and by six months, only 1% of babies are exclusively breastfed. The majority of mothers who stopped breastfeeding early wanted to breastfeed for longer, but did not receive the help they needed to resolve the problems they were facing.

In my constituency of Chichester, most of the support—as cited by the hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed)—is run on a voluntary basis. There is now a brilliant support group that runs out of the Graylingwell chapel, and it is run by retired midwives who give up their time and run the group for free. I know what a lifeline that has been for so many mothers, but at the point when those midwives choose not to do that any more, the service will disappear, because it is not on a statutory footing. Many of the midwives in my local maternity unit at St Richard’s run support groups in their spare time on their days off.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

It does sound concerning that that decision has been taken. I urge all councils to work with their local integrated care boards and other parts of the NHS system to ensure that healthcare of that kind is provided in areas where people can access it, as part of our plan to make certain that healthcare is available throughout the country.

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

7. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the provision of health services for men.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (James Murray)]

Too many men lead too much of their lives in poor health and face barriers to access to health services. We have published England’s first ever men’s health strategy to get men speaking about their physical and mental health, and we are getting on with implementing it. From partnering with the Premier League to investing in the men’s health community fund, we are meeting men where they are, and helping them to lead longer, healthier lives.

[David Reed]

The NHS itself says that prostate cancer often has no symptoms at first, and Prostate Cancer UK says most men with early prostate cancer have no symptoms at all. The Government’s TRANSFORM trial exists because current detection methods are recognised as inadequate. Why does Government messaging still point men towards early symptoms that they are unlikely to have, while cancers that could be cured are becoming cancers that cannot?

[James Murray]

Let me be really clear in my advice to any man who is worried about prostate cancer, whether he has symptoms or not: go and discuss it with your GP. Testing is available when GPs recommend it, and I would recommend to no man that he should worry about it in silence, sit at home and fret about what might be going on.

The wider, targeted screening programme to which the Government have agreed is based on the evidence from weighing up the benefits of screening versus the harm that it can cause. We know that, at present, if cancerous cells are identified and treatment follows—for example, removal of the prostate—it leads to permanent urinary incontinence in 20% of cases and in two thirds of cases to permanent erectile dysfunction.

Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

David Reed Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

If the committee had ever taken me up on my offer to meet the entire committee, I might be able to answer the question, but since it has never done so, I do not know. It is for resident doctors to decide, based on what I have set out, if the committee’s rejection of this offer is reasonable.

Given the material benefits that the offer would bring to resident doctors in a matter of days—an additional 1,000 jobs and significant pay uplifts—and what that would mean for the next few years, I have to be clear that this is our best and final offer. We cannot go any further. If I may say so, we are at a point where the public would judge that we have gone as far as we can; I think quite a lot of people in the country who are watching would say that we have gone further than we should. I do not take that lightly. Resident doctors should not look a gift horse in the mouth, and I hope that they will make those representations to their committee.

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his robust view and position on the BMA. In reference to what was said by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), on the inflationary pressures that we will feel as a result of the conflicts in the middle east, do the figures for the three-year deal use the inflationary projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England? If not, given that this is all about pay, and that the BMA will always come back for more—I think it is being unreasonable at the moment—does the Secretary of State agree that we need new rules around minimum service levels if we want to have a reliable NHS in this new world?

[Wes Streeting]

Pay structure reform and future pay are linked to the DDRB, which is an independent pay review body; its recommendations are one of the things that the BMA wanted the deal to be shaped around. The Government’s position on minimum service levels has been clear.

The hon. Gentleman sets out an alternative position from the Conservative party. I think the BMA should look at that, and judge whether it would be better to do a deal with this Government and move forward constructively. Does it honestly think that if it hampers NHS progress, and goes on endless strikes over the coming years, it will have a better Government to work with at the end of this? I do not think so.

I ought to say one final thing, which we should take really seriously. I have been thinking about this issue in the context of the covid inquiry report, and where we are in terms of threats to this country, the war in Iran, and the war in Ukraine. This country was more exposed during the pandemic than it might have been if the NHS had been in better shape. This country faces some serious threats in the world, and the NHS is not in good enough shape. In that context, we have to start thinking about whether the actions of the BMA are tolerable.

Infant Feeding

David Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for bringing this important issue to the Chamber. My wife and I are expecting our first in the coming weeks, so as hon. Members will expect, this is an important subject in which I am quickly upskilling myself. In my constituency, I have a similar group called Exmouth Bosom Buddies, which does a fantastic job that we know relieves pressure on the NHS. What more does the hon. Member think can be done to allow such groups to grow, thrive and flourish so that they can continue their vital work?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Before the hon. Member gets to her feet, I am just reminded of the midwifery-led Crowborough birthing unit, which helps the lovely mums in my constituency.