Baby Loss Awareness Week

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to speak from the Back Benches for the first time in over a decade following two extremely powerful speeches from both Front Benches. I thank the Minister of State and the shadow Minister for two extremely compassionate and understanding speeches in which they spoke about the sheer pain felt by so many families up and down the country.

I also thank the many hon. Members on all sides—my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and many others—who have spoken so powerfully on this matter. I cannot possibly compete with the power of their words because there is nothing that anyone can suffer more than the loss of a child. I just want to make one observation from my many years—some would say too many—as Health Secretary with respect to this issue, and that observation is about the impact on professionals.

When you go around hospitals up and down the country, and ask the doctors, nurses and midwives, “What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to you in your professional career?”, almost invariably they will say that it is when they lose a baby. We often talk about the trauma for the families, who of course are the primary victims in this situation, but we must never forget the people who are sometimes called the second victims: the doctors, nurses, midwives and other professionals who have to go home, worrying that if they had done something differently that baby might still be alive, and who have to come back to work the next day and struggle on, dealing with that incredible trauma.

In that situation, those professionals want nothing more than to be completely open, transparent and honest with the families and with their colleagues about what happened to ensure that lessons are learned and that that tragedy is never repeated again. But in the NHS today, we make that practically impossible. People are terrified of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the General Medical Council, the Care Quality Commission and their trust. They are worried about being fired and they are worried about all sorts of consequences, so the one thing that should happen—the one thing that everyone in that situation wants to happen more than anything else, which is that lessons are learned from that tragedy—is often the one thing that never happens at all.

Let us remember that there are 1,400 neonatal deaths every year, as the shadow Minister said. That is about four every single day across the NHS. The great tragedy—not just in the NHS but in hospitals all over the world—is the fact that a tragedy can happen in Blackpool one day, and a month later exactly the same tragedy can happen in Cornwall. There has not been enough effort to try to share the learnings from such tragedies. I commend the efforts of the Government and my successor Ministers for doing everything they possibly can to put this right and to ensure that we really do become a learning organisation. In truth, though, this is a big job that will take a long time, because it is about changing culture.

The NHS needs to look at other industries that have successfully changed from having a blame culture to having a learning culture. The airline industry is the most famous example, but there are also the nuclear and oil industries. That job of changing culture will be our central responsibility if we are to reduce the agony for parents and the professionals involved in the care of babies. The most powerful way to change culture is to shout out loud and clear those human stories of the terrible loss involved, because that is what promotes change.

I finish by commending everyone involved in Baby Loss Awareness Week—the brave Members of this House who have spoken out, and given many others hope that they are not alone; the many brave members of the public who have relived their own tragedies over and over again to try to promote change in this area; and the Ministers concerned, who have a heavy responsibility when it comes to this agenda, and who I know take that responsibility with the utmost seriousness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

As ever, I am grateful to be called to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I was not anticipating it because I was not here at the beginning of the debate. I can only apologise for that, but I was elsewhere on unavoidable duties.

This is a debate in which we love to hate participating. It is not a pleasurable experience for anyone who has lost a child, and I know that some Members across the House feel exactly as I do when speaking in this debate. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the opportunity to lay my annual asks on the table.

First, I must give an enormous amount of thanks to the previous Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), whose speech I am really looking forward to watching on catch-up tonight. I am immensely grateful, as are all of us who have been involved in this area for many years, for all that he did. It must be counted as one of his major achievements as Secretary of State that there has been a 19% reduction in stillbirths and an 8% reduction in maternal mortality since 2010. Those are really good figures, and I hope that he will look back on his career in many years when he retires—

[Mr Hunt]

I can retire now. [Laughter.]

[Victoria Prentis]

I hope that my right hon. Friend will count that among his most important achievements. I expect that he said, as did the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), that blame is probably not the way to go, and that we need a cultural shift in the NHS, so my ask this year is that we should make maternal death a never event. Luckily, maternal deaths are rare—I was almost one of them myself—but making them a never event, with the definition and the muscle that that provides, would be very helpful.

With my prison service background, I should add that a child or, indeed, a mother dying in custody should also probably be a never event, with all the chain of investigations that should flow from that. I know that the recent death in custody is being very well investigated, and there is no need to comment further on that case now. The never event definition is helpful, because it sets in train a course of investigations that need not be blamed-filled but which are helpful for learning.

Sadly, the situation elsewhere is not as helpful as in this country. A baby dies every 11 seconds worldwide, and many maternal deaths are completely preventable. I am pleased that the Secretary of State for International Development has chosen to make maternity a priority for the Department for International Trade. He wrote an excellent article about it in The Times last week, and I encourage hon. Members to read that article.

The Secretary of State for International Development is helping members of the Royal College of Midwives to provide training in rural Bangladesh, and he is resourcing organisations that work with women who have had female genital mutilation performed on them and who have dreadful maternal complications as a result. He is working to provide vaccinations, which are so helpful in preventing the death of newborn babies. Across the board, the fact that maternity is now a priority for DFID is really helpful.

I close by thanking you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your support in this area and for allowing me to say a few brief words this afternoon, and by advertising the baby loss service at St Mary’s, Banbury at 6 o’clock this Sunday. It is an extraordinary event, and we have been doing it for only a few years. People came to that church in the first year who had never talked about their loss, and it is overwhelming.

Such services are taking place all over the country, as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said. Unfortunately we have not organised one in Parliament this year, as we normally do, because we are not sitting, but I am sure we will organise one in future years. I thank everybody who has taken part in this debate, which I think is now annual. I am thrilled that we have Government time, and I hope we have it again in future.