Baby Loss

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I welcome this important debate, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), for bringing to the House, during Baby Loss Awareness Week, this debate on a grief that touches thousands, who often grieve in silence.

I will use this debate to call for a UK-wide perinatal death reduction programme, and will talk about foetal growth restriction monitoring. I am really glad that the Secretary of State for Health is in the Chamber; that shows his commitment. This debate is well timed to inform the rapid review of maternity and neonatal safety in England.

For many, baby loss is invisible and misunderstood. This week breaks that silence, honours lives cut short and stands with families who carry their babies’ memory every day. Like other Members, I pay tribute to charities like Sands, Tommy’s and the Miscarriage Association. Their work must be supported and recognised.

I speak with a heavy heart to share the story of Maia Devlin Corfield, a beautiful baby girl who should be here today. Her parents Sherena and Jack came to my advice surgery to tell me about Maia’s stillbirth at Kingston hospital. Though Sherena’s pregnancy was low risk, Maia showed signs of growth restriction. Staff reassured Sherena but failed to act. Maia was born still on 29 November 2024. The autopsy showed she was healthy, but died due to a placental condition that halted her growth and breathing.

Babies with growth issues like Maia are eight times more likely to die, and it was Kingston’s foetal growth monitoring system that failed her. It diverged from national standards and, despite early warnings, many unsafe practices like that remain. The Government’s own maternity and neonatal safety investigation into Maia’s death made nine recommendations, yet risks still persist and are not listened to. Sherena and Jack often feel that they are not being listened to, but bereaved parents need to be heard because by listening to them, we can identify those areas that need to change. It is that culture and the regulation and standards that all need to work together to see real change.

Freedom of information requests by Sherena and Jack have revealed that at least 27 trusts cannot properly identify babies with growth issues. The issue is that many hospitals use a global growth monitoring system that under-detects small babies in high-income countries like the UK because it uses data from across the world. Safer UK-developed systems based on NHS data do exist and are used by many units, but Maia was failed by outdated growth charts still in use at Kingston and St George’s and at many other hospitals. A key part of the system is those growth charts. Donald Peebles, NHS England’s clinical director for maternity, has confirmed that a national safety alert will soon advise trusts to stop using these intergrowth charts, but is there a system to track which hospitals still use them, and how can we update foetal growth monitoring systems urgently?

I have also talked to the chief nurse for the South West London integrated care board, who highlighted issues of midwife retention and recruitment and, in particular, maternity triage, which needs reform with a universal standard that would ensure consistency of safety and access—those early warning systems that failed Maia and are failing others. Just as we have a mental health investment standard, we should consider a similar maternity services standard as well.

I turn to the demands for change. The “Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle” published by NHS England in June 2023 outlines three key elements for foetal growth monitoring, but they are not consistently adopted and then monitored to ensure that they are implemented. There are too few of those deaths in each trust to rely on the trust to take the action; it has to be done at a national level. In fact, it has to be done across every nation—Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England—otherwise there will be inconsistencies as there already are between the different nations. Will the Minister work with counterparts across the UK to ensure that no nation falls behind? Will the Minister meet Sherena and Jack to discuss how to improve maternity care and look at the findings they have? We owe it to Maia. We owe it to every family shattered by preventable baby loss to demand accountability, enforce standards and ensure that no parent is ever told that everything is fine when it is not.