Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

Debate between Desmond Swayne and John Hayes

2nd reading
Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is the first private Member’s Bill that I have moved in 30 years, and I have been somewhat discombobulated by the extraordinary amount of effort that has gone into getting just six clauses before the House today, so I am deeply indebted to the Government Whips Office, which has been extraordinarily helpful. I do not know what is happening to this Parliament—it is vastly more helpful than I was ever expected to be when I was a Government Whip! Anyway, I am equally indebted to the Ministers and their private offices and, indeed, to the parliamentary draftsmen. Of course, included in those Ministers was the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), who has pursued this particular agenda in opposition and in government, frankly, since God was a boy.

Equally, I give my thanks to the Public Bill Office, which has been exceptionally helpful, and to our former Leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom, and her 1001 Critical Days Foundation. Finally, I give thanks for the heavy lifting done by my parliamentary assistant and by our former colleague, Will Quince, and his team. Of course, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Standing Orders are clear: we do not refer to people in the Gallery—I take it you have got the hint.

This Bill responds to the widely held view that services for infants, prospective parents and parents of young children are somewhat vulnerable when they rely largely on non-statutory guidance and programme funding. The purpose of the Bill is to shine the legislative spotlight on those services and to ensure that they are systematically understood and are known about and scrutinised by Parliament.

It is a truism that if we want a better future, we need to start with the provision of services to babies today. It is vital that those services are available in that critical period of 1,001 days from pregnancy through to two years old. If children are confident that they are safe and if they are responded to properly by adults, they will build relationships, they will be healthy, they will have language development and their future learning will be assured. That is vital. It is vital that we make that impact in those early weeks, months and years when 1 million neural networks are being formed every second and the baby’s brain grows to 80% of the weight of an adult’s brain by two years old.

If those services are not available, and if problems arise and are not addressed, there will be problems with speech, problems with relationships and problems with development later, so it is vital that they are there.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

As a former schoolmaster, my right hon. Friend will be familiar with the work of Piaget, who makes exactly that point: early development—prior attainment, as it is often called—is a determinant of subsequent progress both at school and beyond it. In rural communities such as mine, it is vital that the delivery of the services my right hon. Friend describes is done in a peripatetic way, ideally through what were once called district nurses—familiar figures in the community who could engage with local people and build trust. I wonder if we ought to add to his Bill, in the form of an amendment, a call to bring back district nurses.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I will address exactly that point shortly.

If a child is not developing properly and is not sleeping, feeding or communicating, parents need to know that they have somewhere to turn. If that difficulty is spotted by, let us say, a district nurse, a midwife, a health professional or one of the excellent workers in our family hubs, help is on the way. If that help does not arrive or does not arrive in a timely manner, problems will present later, when they will be much more difficult and more expensive to address.

I have received an enormous amount of advice from clinicians at the top of their game and from frontline workers with enormous experience, laying out all the vital services that ought to be provided for by a Bill such as this and, indeed, offering me substantial help in putting the Bill together. It would be perfectly proper for hon. Members to share that sort of advice with the Minister today, and that is the proper place for it. This Bill is quite deliberately written at a higher level. It does not specify what the services should be; it empowers Ministers to regulate and make provision for those services. That is the overwhelming purpose of the Bill.

Of course, there is a vast amount of evidence out there that suggests that all these services are vital, be it perinatal mental health services for parents, relationship training for parents and their child or the peripatetic services that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) referred to, as is the systematic provision of those services.

All that is vital, and if it sounds familiar it ought to be, because that is what is being delivered to a large extent by our excellent Best Start family hubs and healthy babies programme. The Bill does not provide something new in the way of services; it will make those services accountable, more easily scrutinised by Parliament, and therefore less prone to being deprioritised. We might recall what happened to much of the Sure Start programme, and let that be a salutary lesson, particularly for Opposition Members.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Desmond Swayne and John Hayes

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

T2. Will the Minister of State’s inspirational words about beauty be matched by the deeds of Highways England?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

It does not surprise me that my right hon. Friend has drawn attention to my rapturously received and beautifully articulated speech on beauty. He is right to say that we now need action. We have established a design panel at Highways England, and in a few weeks’ time we will produce a new design guide. It will dismay all the crass modernists and harsh brutalists, but it will delight all those who believe that our public infrastructure can be stylish and elegant as well as deliver the necessary utility. My role is only this: to rediscover the age-old golden thread with which all of that will be woven.