Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill (Instructions)

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson]

I do not know about the relationship between the Lord Advocate and the Scottish National party, but I do know that a remedy is going through this House today that could dispense with whatever differences there might be in Scotland, and deal with an issue that all of us in this House are agreed needs to be dealt with quickly.

I have listened to the argument made by the Minister and others that due process needs to be followed. Indeed, I have listened to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who said, “You have to remember that the Scottish system is different. The level of proof in Scotland is different. There was greater information available.” The implication is that when the Scottish Parliament considers this, it might come to the conclusion that some of the convictions were safe, and some postmasters and postmistresses would not be exonerated at all. We have not taken that view for the rest of the United Kingdom. Indeed, some judges have argued that not all the convictions were unsafe, but we have decided that given how the whole Horizon situation was dealt with, it is fair that we take the view that the problems may affect some people who were rightly convicted and do not start going through each case. I remember that an argument made by a number of Members here was, “Why don’t we do this case by case?”

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

The situation is different in Scotland; the Lord Advocate’s position is exactly that she does not want to risk one person who was rightly convicted being exonerated. It is therefore impossible for Scotland to follow the same route as us at the moment. As was detailed in the Scottish Parliament earlier this year, the Lord Advocate is against mass exoneration. Until she changes her position and the advice that she gives to the Scottish Government, it is impossible for them to follow what we are doing in the House of Commons through this Bill.

[Sammy Wilson]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was not listening to me, but I made the point that although there may be cases in other parts of the United Kingdom that are in the same situation, given the exceptional circumstances, we are prepared to exonerate. If the Lord Advocate’s position is as he says, fair enough, but Parliament is making this decision for people in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. As the Bill is available to us, we should apply it to people in Scotland as well.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We are very keen to find out exactly who knew what, and Sir Wyn Williams’s inquiry was made statutory so that people could have access to all the information. There is nothing to which they should not have access, and all the disclosures should be available to the inquiry. That should lead to people being held to account, and the exploring of other avenues in respect of what might be done at that point and the evidence that is uncovered. I am not aware of the issue that the hon. Lady raised about what happened in December, but I am happy to take it away and look at it.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

The Horizon scandal is exactly that: an appalling scandal, which could potentially be continuing today but for the commitment, dedication and efforts of a small group of people who were determined to get to the truth. I hope that one of those people, Alan Bates, can finally accept the honour he deserves, but he will do that only when Paula Vennells does the correct thing and either hands back her CBE or is rightly stripped of it.

In the context of wider convictions, in Scotland the prosecution of individuals rests solely with the Crown Office, and criminal case reviews are a devolved matter. What discussions have the UK Government or the Lord Chancellor had, or what discussions do they plan to have, with the Scottish Government and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to ensure that Scottish victims of this scandal secure the justice that they deserve?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend is right that Alan Bates has said he will not accept his OBE until Paula Vennells’ CBE has been withdrawn. That is another good reason for her to hand back her CBE, because it would allow Alan to be recognised, quite rightly, through the honours process.

My hon. Friend raised a good point, and we are keen to ensure that anything we do is UK-wide, not just England-based, so I am sure that those conversations will take place. The conversations we have had with the Lord Chancellor have really only happened today. We need to get to a position that would resolve this situation and meet the requirements of the advisory board and others across the House. I am sure that that conversation will be going on between the Lord Chancellor and his counterparts in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Birth Trauma

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) on how she introduced this debate and her bravery and courage in articulating her own case and also those of many others in the Chamber today and watching at home. My hon. Friend mentioned some of the figures that came out of the Mumsnet survey into birth trauma, and one of the most stark for me was that 79% of women have experienced birth trauma. At what should be and often is the happiest time in our lives as parents, to go through that trauma is unacceptable. For so many to do that is incredible.

Another issue that I thought was important was the number who felt they were not listened to, which comes up time and time again. One says:

“I know 100% I was not listened to, because my husband was there begging for them to listen, and he was refused point-blank and told to go away, because I was just ‘freaking out because I was hormonal and pregnant’.”

That kind of care is unacceptable. The fact that so many women at that vulnerable stage feel that they are not listened to is shameful. I was particularly reminded of that when I saw and heard the spontaneous applause and ovation following my hon. Friend’s speech. I now feel that the women in the Gallery and the mums are being listened to. They are being listened to in our Chamber today. It is a shame that this is the first time this matter has been debated in our Parliament, but the work of my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Canterbury together across parties has ensured we can have a debate today. That means, I hope, that more and more women will feel listened to on this important subject.

I will speak about birth trauma from a local constituency point of view and in the context of the downgrading of our maternity hospital at Dr Gray’s in Elgin. I have raised it many times. It is certainly not the levels of trauma that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has experienced and articulated, but it is a trauma that too many of my constituents go through. I will articulate some of their cases. In 2018, Dr Gray’s maternity unit was given a temporary 12-month downgrade. Here we are in October 2023, and I am still as the MP for Moray raising concerns that we do not have a full consultant-led maternity unit back up and running. It means that any woman who is not on a green pathway has to travel to either Aberdeen or Inverness in the most trying of circumstances to give birth.

I will briefly mention our own experience. We have two lovely boys: Alistair and James. Alistair was born in Dr Gray’s. He was on a green pathway and everything was fine. The care at Dr Gray’s was exceptional. Our second son, James, was born in 2021, and he and my wife were on a green pathway right up until the moment she went into labour. We went in to see the midwife in Elgin just as the labour was starting, and she just was not comfortable; there was something I picked up, and I was not being told everything. They just were not 100% happy, so they said, “Go up to Dr Gray’s and just see how things are progressing.” I knew if anything went wrong, we would be going to Aberdeen, because I had been dealing with far too many of these cases as the MP. I always felt that, luckily, I would not experience that, because Krystle had been on the green pathway with both Alistair and James.

Things clearly were not right, and we were told at one point that James’s heart rate was dipping. As soon as you hear that as a parent, you start to worry. I am not medically trained, but when told that the heart rate of a baby who is about to be born is dipping, and that there is worry about contractions, parents immediately start to worry. We were reassured by the teams in Dr Gray’s, but then we were told that we would have to transfer, which was my nightmare. I had been raising questions about this issue in Holyrood with Scottish Government Ministers, who responded very well, and I had raised it here. The journey from Elgin to Aberdeen is 70 miles on a not particularly good road. I remember being told that we would do an emergency transfer: Krystle would be put in an ambulance and I would go in the car through to Aberdeen.

I do not get particularly emotional, but that walk with my wife on a trolley from the maternity suite in Dr Gray’s, where I hoped our second son would be born, through the hospital to an ambulance was one of the worst I have ever experienced in my life, because I knew those were the last few minutes I would be with my wife before she was put in the back of an ambulance to travel separately from me to Aberdeen. She got strapped in. I cannot imagine what it is like having contractions strapped on your back in the back of an ambulance, facing a 90-minute journey through to a hospital to give birth, knowing that the child inside has problems with a dipping heart rate. But I had to leave her; I could not be with her at her most vulnerable time. She was put in the back of the ambulance, and I was told to go straight away, because the ambulance obviously had blue lights and could get to Aberdeen far quicker than me.

I left with the doors closed, got in the car and I kept looking in my rear-view mirror, thinking, “Where’s the ambulance?” I passed Lhanbryde, Mosstodloch and Fochabers and there was still no ambulance. Then it started to hit me, “What if they had to pull over? What if something has gone wrong in the back of the ambulance?” We were warned about that, and I had been raising that on behalf of constituents. The ambulance never came. I was going up the Dramlachs between Fochabers and Keith, and I suddenly saw the blue lights in my rear-view mirror, and I have never been happier in my life, because I knew at least she was still progressing through to Aberdeen.

To cut the story short, we got to Aberdeen. I could not find the maternity suite. It is a big hospital. Dr Gray’s is easy to navigate; Aberdeen is not. Our son was born safely and healthily, but that is a journey that no mother in labour should ever have to make, and no father or family member should have to follow the ambulance. My hon. Friend said that often fathers were kept in the dark. I have never felt more in the dark than during my 90-minute drive to Aberdeen on my own, worried about what would happen to my wife and child. This has been going on for far too long. A temporary downgrade for 12 months was bad enough; for it still to be happening in 2023 is shameful and unacceptable, and I will always stand up in this place and at Holyrood to call for Dr Gray’s to have a full consultant-led maternity unit.

The last case I want to articulate is that of another constituent who gave birth this year. I will read out her birth story, because it goes to the heart of birth trauma. There are elements around surgery and what my hon. Friend so bravely articulated that are unacceptable, but the birth trauma in this case is equally unacceptable and has had a long-term impact on my constituent. She wrote on the local Facebook page for the campaign group, Keep MUM, which does outstanding work. It is the group that got the maternity unit established at Dr Gray’s many decades ago. Marj Adams led that campaign, and she is now, with her daughters, leading the Keep MUM campaign to get it reinstated. It has an excellent Facebook page that shares these stories. The mum said:

“I was lucky enough to have my first baby at Dr Gray’s in 2020, two years after the unit was downgraded. Although the fear of transfer was high at all times, the actual experience of being able to labour at home for as long as possible and make my way into the hospital when I felt ready which is five minutes’ away from my house was amazing.

I had my second baby in 2023 and, due to last minute complications, I was told I had to give birth in Aberdeen. On the morning that my contractions started, I phoned Dr Gray’s and was advised to make my way through to Aberdeen asap as it was my second pregnancy and, because of this, they wouldn’t turn me away. We drove through, I was contracting the whole way there, which was horrible.

When I arrived at Aberdeen and was examined in triage, I was told I was only 2 cm so would need to go home as ‘women labour the best at home’. I explained that I was from Elgin and this wasn’t possible as it’s a 4-hour round trip and this is my second pregnancy and I progressed quickly with my first pregnancy.

They then advised that we would need to book a hotel as we couldn’t stay at the hospital as they don’t have space.”

So a mum in labour who had been told by Dr Gray’s to go to Aberdeen and that she would not be turned away, was being turned away. She continues:

“So we frantically tried to find a room to book and managed to get one just down the road from the hospital, but check-in for the room wasn’t until 3pm, and by this point it was only 12 pm. We asked if we could stay a few more hours at the hospital and we were told ‘no’.

I was then contracting heavily in the hotel car park, my waters had gone and were leaking everywhere and I was crying my eyes out feeling so scared and uncomfortable. I phoned the hospital back around 2 pm and explained that the contractions were a lot stronger and closer together and asked if I could come back in, but they said they didn’t have space for me so I could only come back in at 3pm. So I waited for another hour and, by the time I got to triage and was examined, I was 7-8 cm. My baby was born 30 minutes later.”

The mum finishes by saying:

“The whole experience was awful and felt inhumane. I had several panic attacks throughout and afterwards and I still feel panicked when I think about it now.”

She could not give birth close to home as she wished. She had to drive through a horrendous journey from Moray to Aberdeen. She was turned away by a hospital. Her waters broke in a hotel car park where she was seeking refuge before she went into labour, and her baby was born just 30 minutes after finally being admitted to the hospital.

The hospital and NHS Grampian have rightly apologised for the appalling way in which they treated my constituent, this mother. The trauma that she went through and the fact that it still affects her shows that today’s debate is important; in it, we can articulate in this place the concerns of our constituents. I have been proud to be part of the debate and to listen to outstanding contributions from colleagues. I hope that mums here in Westminster and watching from home feel reassured that their parliamentarians across the House will stand up for them to ensure that these birth traumas can be minimised and hopefully be completely ruled out in future. It should and must always be the happiest time of our lives to bring new people into this world. It is a shame that too many people continue to suffer from birth trauma. Let us do everything we can to reduce it.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady gallops way ahead of me; I will come on to speak about that. That is what my private Member’s Bill, now an Act, seeks to address, so I will come back to those comments.

Stillbirths are not the only issue. Progress has been poor on neonatal death rates, which have plateaued for some years and are even further away from coming down to those 2025 targets. There were 1,719 neonatal deaths last year—that is deaths within 28 days of being born. There is also the whole subject of miscarriage. I will not go into great detail on that, but we know that at least one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage, and there are probably more that we do not know about. The Government have done a lot of good work on this. I pay tribute to the former Health and Social Care Secretary, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, for his emphasis on safety in hospitals, particularly safety around maternity, and for the launch of the Safer Care Maternity action plan back in 2016, which were all about improvements in maternity safety training. The Our Chance campaign was targeted at pregnant women and their families to raise awareness of symptoms that can lead to stillbirth.

The inauguration of bereavement suites in hospitals was another important development—I have seen my own in Worthing. It was wholly unsatisfactory that a woman, following a stillbirth, would be placed in a bed next to a mother who had fortunately had a healthy, screaming baby. The impact on the mother and the father of having a stillbirth and then seeing the reverse was traumatic and had to be dealt with. The bereavement suites provided a more discreet, private area, away from those mums lucky enough to have healthy babies.

[Douglas Ross]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. It allows me the opportunity to welcome the fact that, last week, NHS Grampian announced the upgrading of the bereavement suite at Dr Gray’s Hospital. Marsha Dean from Elgin, one of two bereavement specialist midwives in the NHS Grampian area, welcomed that. Tina Megevand from Moray Sands said, “It’s so very important that anyone affected by pregnancy loss or death of a baby gets the best possible bereavement care and is offered a safe, protected space to spend time and make memories with their baby.” What my hon. Friend has just said is crucial and I just wanted to put on record our appreciation in Moray for having such a facility.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting on record what his local hospital is doing, and I hope that that is happening around the country. Certainly, my own hospital takes great pride in its bereavement suites and they have made a big difference to the impact on parents in its maternity wing.

We have had the Ockenden report as well as the Cumberlege review, so there has been a lot of activity from the Department of Health and Social Care, but we need to go so much further. Although I will not go into detail here, I wish to reference the high incidence of stillbirths and baby loss among the black, Asian and minority ethnic community, who are something like five times less likely to receive maternal aftercare.

As hon. Members have mentioned, there are also real challenges and big vacancies in the midwifery workforce. As has been said, 38% of maternity services have been rated as requiring improvements in safety, so there is still a long way to go. One thing that has particularly alarmed me—I am sure other hon. Members will have had the briefing from that excellent charity, Sands—is the state of perinatal pathology. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) may be talking further on that. Currently, there is a significant proportion of parents who have to wait more than three to six months for their babies’ post mortem to be undertaken and for the results to be communicated to them. Those waiting times are then further exacerbated by poor communications about what is happening. Having gone through the trauma of losing a newborn baby, parents then have to wait a long time to find out what happened, which causes them additional trauma.

As I mentioned earlier, there is the whole issue of mental illness and, in particular, the impact of mental illness and depression and the prevalence among teenage mothers. It is important that we deal with that early and that the support is there because we know—the Minister mentioned this in the previous debate—about the high incidence of suicide linked to the perinatal period.

Therefore, this is an important subject. Good work has been done. The Government have good plans, but there is still a lot of work to do before we can genuinely say that this is a very safe country in which to give birth and we rank with the top countries across the rest of Europe.

I wish to talk about my excellent private Member’s Act, which passed through Parliament some time ago. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will not be surprised to hear me mention it again because I have raised it on the Floor of the House many times. I have harangued the Minister about it many times and will continue to do so.

My Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc.) Act 2019 passed through its final stages in this House on 15 March 2019. It received Royal Assent on 26 March 2019; that is 1,303 days ago. It did four things. First, it enabled opposite sex couples to have a civil partnership. That became law on new year’s eve 2019. On that day, 167 couples availed themselves of that opportunity and many thousands have since, so we can tick that box. A second part of the Act enabled for the first time the names of mothers to be included on marriage certificates. Up until then, they did not exist, which particularly added insult to injury if it was the mother who brought up the child who was getting married and the father, whose name does appear, had never been on the scene at all. That at last was reversed with my Act—another tick.

Another part of the Act mandated the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to produce a pregnancy loss review. A committee was set up—I sat on that committee —and in July this year the independent pregnancy loss review, which contained many recommendations—there were some good things in it, even though it had not met since 2018—was at last published, so another tick.

The fourth part of my Act was on coroners’ investigations into stillbirths. What was agreed by this House unanimously, with Government support, following much scrutiny in the other place as well, was that the Secretary of State must

“make arrangements for the preparation of a report on whether, and if so how, the law ought to be changed to enable or require coroners to investigate still-births”,

and that, after the report had been published, the Lord Chancellor may, by regulations, amend part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. It was a very simple amendment to ensure that, in future, coroners had the power to investigate stillbirths. It did not require any more primary legislation. It required a one-line amendment to the Coroners and Justice Act.

When I made my speech for my private Member’s Bill on 15 March 2019, I could not have been more wrong. I said then that I knew that we were pushing at an open door with my last measure, as the Health Secretary had signalled his support for it at the Dispatch Box during a statement on stillbirths in November. I then set out the anomaly in the law where coroners in England have the power to investigate any unexplained death of any humans unless they are stillbirths. That is because a baby who dies during delivery is not legally considered to have lived. If the baby has not lived, it has not died and coroners can investigate deaths only where there is a body of a deceased person.

Most people agreed—certainly the coroners themselves, who strongly supported this—that that is an anomaly in the law. Given some of the scandals that I will come to in a minute, it has given rise to a suspicion—this is the point that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) raised—that some stillbirths that went unexplained might have been avoidable, and were mistakenly registered as stillbirths because that effectively excluded the coroner from launching a further investigation. My Bill was therefore simple in its aim.

A consultation was launched, actually before my Bill became an Act, because the Secretary of State was so supportive of it and saw it as a formality. The consultation on the changes closed on 18 June 2019—over four years ago—and has still not been published. In order for new regulations to come in, the consultation and subsequent proposals have to be published, but we still have not got over the first bar of publishing the consultation. I have frequently queried when the Government will publish the consultation, and have frequently received a barrage of excuses. Of course, covid was the first excuse for why the consultation results—not even the proposals—could not be published.

The matter was chased up by the Justice Committee, which produced its own report on coroners and reinforced the need to get on with the measures in my Act. That message was reinforced by the Health and Social Care Committee, which also produced a report to say that the Government needed to get on with the measures. Today’s Minister, for whom I have a lot of time, as my near neighbour in Lewes, has written to me several times. One of the excuses was that we needed to wait for the Health and Care Act 2022 to go through in the last Session because of various considerations that could have an impact. That Act passed last year, so is not a consideration anymore.

We then had to get the pregnancy loss review published, for which we had waited since 2019. That has now been published, as I have said. We then had the further excuse that the Ministry of Justice was dragging its feet. The problem is that it is a Department of Health and a Ministry of Justice issue. I have tackled the Minister for Justice on several occasions. I asked for a joint meeting with the Minister for Health and the Minister for Justice. That meeting was cancelled six times, until it eventually happened on 21 March this year, when I was told that everything was in hand and being sorted out. I raised the matter again in Justice questions on 12 September. I was told:

“Both the Health Minister and I are pushing this as fast as we possibly can.”—[Official Report, 12 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 766.]

This is appalling. Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I have been in this House for an equally long time. I cannot remember a piece of legislation waiting to be enacted for as long as this, particularly when there appear to be no objections to it. It has been passed unanimously and is not contentious; the coroners want to do it. It is absolutely extraordinary. I will take this opportunity to put it out in the open yet again that the Government need to get on with this. The legislation is even more important now than when it was passed in 2019, and when I produced it as a private Member’s Bill in 2017.

Four things needed to be resolved about how coroners would look at these matters, and they have all been resolved. First, we all agreed that they should look only at full-term stillbirths. That is where a stillbirth is least likely to happen, and therefore more questions arise. I think that everybody agreed on that. Secondly, it should be at the discretion of the coroner. The coroner will certainly not want to look at every single stillbirth, but where questions are raised by the parent or others that something has gone a bit awry and we need more information, the coroner can decide at his or her discretion whether there is a case for further investigation. We are talking about dozens, or scores, of cases, not hundreds or thousands.

Thirdly, it will be up to the coroner to decide, even if the parents do not want a review. That was a difficult one, but there is evidence that some stillbirths can be brought on by domestic violence during pregnancy, and obviously there may be a cover-up because a mum is being coerced. It is right that there should not be a veto and it should be down to the coroner to decide. Fourthly, the coroners have decided that it is not a significant resource issue. We do not need to train up a fleet of specialist coroners; they always want more money, but they think that they can simply take on the responsibility. All those things have been resolved. There are no outstanding questions, but as I said the need for the legislation has grown since it went through.

I do not need to remind everybody about the various scandals that have happened. The Nottingham maternity review currently under way covers the latest of those revelations. It will be the UK’s largest maternity review, with 1,266 families having already contacted the review team with their concerns. The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust review, which has already been mentioned, of the deaths of more than 200 babies and nine mothers between 2000 and 2019, found that 201 babies could or would have survived had the trust provided better care, and that families were wrongly blamed when their babies died, were locked out of inquiries into what happened, and were treated without compassion and kindness.

The Morecambe Bay review in 2015 found unnecessary deaths of 11 babies and one mother between 2004 and 2013 due to oxygen shortages, mismanaged labour, failure to recognise complications, and so on. When the East Kent review was published, the headline was that the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust was logging baby deaths as stillbirths when in fact they were not stillbirths. What would the reason for that be? Potentially a cover-up, so that a further investigation by a coroner could not take place.

The East Kent review into the ongoing problems with the trust was described as harrowing, with more than 80 concerns about midwives and nurses working at the trust investigated by the regulators since 2015, including cases involving the police. Eleven midwives and nurses from the trust have been struck off, suspended or placed under conditions in relation to such cases, and 64 doctors from the hospital have been subject to investigation by the General Medical Council over the last decade, with three struck off and three suspended. The report showed a failure to implement the recommendations of earlier reports, allowing failings to continue at East Kent, and at other hospitals elsewhere in the country.

It needs reinforcing that most nurses, midwives and doctors do a fantastic job in difficult circumstances. They most of all will want to ensure that incompetence by a few, and potential cover-up, do not effectively undermine the reputation of those working in maternity care across the whole country.

UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

The Department and I work closely with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making. We are making this a priority in terms of safety in sport, and I will certainly raise the issue in my next meeting with that Department.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I welcome the work that is being done in Scotland and across the UK. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a football referee with the Scottish FA. On that subject, how does the Minister envisage this guidance and any updates being disseminated to the match officials, referees and umpires who officiate at all age groups and all levels, and who are often the closest to incidents that happen on the field of play or the pitch?