Baby Loss

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I do agree. I had the pleasure of meeting Annika last year, following on from the speech in Parliament. I know that there are many parents like her who want to see some good come out of the loss. It demonstrates the importance of motivating those parents and allowing them to get involved. Very often, the Snowdrop suite at Scarborough hospital acts as a real reminder in memory of Gypsy.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate and on speaking in such a powerful and deeply human way. She is talking about parents’ desire to see some good come from their loss. Does she agree that where failings have occurred, part of that critical process should involve NHS trusts communicating with parents on an ongoing basis about the actions and steps being taken to ensure that these tragedies are not repeated?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I certainly do. The more open trusts can be and the more they can share information, the more we are likely to achieve reductions in baby death rates. We need that learning to happen in order to tackle what went wrong and why. Without openness, we will not have that.

Freedom of information requests that I submitted to every NHS England trust indicated that approximately 25% of maternity hospitals still do not have bereavement suites. I am aware that, because of the huge difference it makes to parents, the Government have done much to ensure that funding is available and that action can be taken to tackle the problem.