Infants, Parents and Carers Bill (First sitting)

Jess Asato Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I am incredibly grateful to be sitting on this Committee.

Reforging cross-party consensus on the value of investing in the early years is essential, and the Bill helps us to get back to where we ought to be. It focuses on improving support for children and their families so that everyone can get the best possible start in life. I reiterate my thanks to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for introducing this important piece of legislation.

I tabled an amendment to the Bill to make what is implicit in its intention explicit, and will describe why I have done so. To address the right hon. Member’s concerns about further amendments, it is always the case that where campaigners see an opportunity for further reform within the law, they seek to influence it. Many of us would like to see this legislation proceed and become law swiftly. I am sure that those campaigners will understand the need to make sure of the outcomes on inequalities, which speak to many of their aims with the legislation, and will want to see the amendment succeed.

If we want to improve experiences at the beginning of life—recognising how determinative that period is for life chances—it stands to reason that this legislation should make explicit the inequalities of outcomes for babies and infants. This was a key requirement of the Childcare Act 2006, and it was part of the governing philosophy behind Sure Start, which, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found, had the biggest impact on improving outcomes for children in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

As it stands, the Bill relies on the Government reporting on the views of parents and carers and their prospective counterparts. Although that insight is incredibly valuable, it ignores those who cannot speak for themselves.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Has the hon. Lady considered the impact of section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 and its requirement that Ministers, as an ordinary part of making the assessment, have to include the issue of inequality?

[Jess Asato]

Indeed I have, and I will come to that in a moment.

As I was saying, the Bill does not give sufficient voice to those who cannot speak for themselves—babies and infants. My amendment seeks to ensure that the Government will assess how successful services are in improving the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of infants, parents and carers and, crucially, will assess our progress in tackling inequalities in the early years.

Although there is other legislation, such as the Equality Act, to guide secondary legislation, we know from bitter experience that future Governments could repeal legislation that has equality as its goal. Indeed, we are in difficult and divisive times in our country at the moment. There are those who would seek to repeal the Equality Act, thereby undoing any of the protective features that that Act would bring to this important Bill.

To anticipate future Government policies, the Bill must make reporting on inequality of outcomes paramount, because significant inequalities exist in many of the most fundamental measures of babies’ health and development. Black babies, for example, are more than twice as likely as white babies to be stillborn. Babies in the 10% most-deprived areas are more than twice as likely to die as babies in the 10% least-deprived areas. Babies growing up in poverty are more likely to experience domestic abuse in their family and are less likely to be breastfed.

At the moment, these inequalities, which are reported on by Government through auspices such as the Equality Act, might be identified, but in future there may be no requirement for that to be the case as part of the Bill. Simply showing that there is provision for babies, infants and their parents and carers could ensure that the Secretary of State is able to discharge their duty under the Bill, whether it actually operates to reduce inequalities or not. Under our current legislation, we still have deep inequalities, in part because the focus on reducing inequalities between areas has been lost—and lost deliberately. I think we ought to see whether we can return to making sure that that is the focus.

As it stands, the Bill does not explicitly require the Secretary of State to look at outcomes for babies and their parents, or at what those outcomes may indicate about the quality and availability of services. Although the views and experiences of parents and carers are incredibly important in understanding need, they do not paint the full picture and we cannot rely solely on them to analyse successes and failures of services. The public deserve to know the realities of inequalities in early childhood, and Governments must welcome robust scrutiny of their policies to help support babies.

The amendment also requires the Government to look at the wellbeing of parents. That is particularly important given the Maternal Mental Health Alliance report that said that one in four mothers experiences a mental health condition during pregnancy or after birth. Suicide remains the leading cause of death for women between six weeks and a year after giving birth. The amendment keeps the Bill flexible and streamlined, and I understand that it would not increase any financial cost of the Bill. It also clarifies the role of the Government in measuring success.

The Bill needs to be future-proof—indeed, the purpose of the Bill is to ensure, on a cross-party basis, that our services genuinely lead to a change in outcomes for babies, infants and children throughout their lives. It must stand the test of time, regardless of the colour, priorities or whims of future Governments. I have absolute faith in this Government and their commitment to early years investment, including the wonderful growth of Best Start family hubs, but we all saw how quickly the consensus behind Sure Start fell apart with a change in Government and how a generation of children and their parents were disadvantaged by its collapse.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West for bringing forward this excellent Bill. I await the technical appraisal of whether it needs to be amended, but we cannot deny that inequalities directly influence specific types of services. In my role as a GP, I have seen that children born in deprived areas need a much higher level of support from Sure Start-type services and video interactive guidance, because often relationships are poor. Those poor relationships can lead to children starting school not being able to hold a knife and fork or still being in nappies. Inequalities influence what types of services are needed. I accept the point from the right hon. Member that there may be technical guidance, but perhaps it should be integrated within the Bill.

[Jess Asato]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I agree entirely with the force of the argument in favour of equality being included in the Bill. It is important that these issues be addressed. The difference between us is that I think they are already implicit in the Bill. Demand that it be explicit is predicated on future-proofing it. Alas, were a future Government determined to remove equalities and repeal the Equalities Act, they would soon enough repeal the provision within this Bill. The difficulty with Sure Start was that there was no statutory provision, and it was done by administrative fiat without putting legislation before the Commons.

[Jess Asato]

When developing legislation, the core purpose that we want to achieve needs to be explicit within it, because otherwise it could get watered down. The right hon. Member is right that any future Government can overturn any previous Government’s legislation, unless bound by international law and so forth. Making the intention explicit makes it more difficult for future Governments to undo what has come before, because it allows the brilliant light of transparency to be shone where we might need it most in the future. To make the issue of equality explicit in the Bill, and for the Government to recognise its importance, would be a small but, perhaps in the future, important way of maintaining the integrity of the legislation.

I am delighted that the amendment has the support of a number of children’s charities working in this space, including Start Strong, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the National Children’s Bureau, Barnardo’s, the first 1,001 days movement, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Tessa Jowell Foundation.