Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

Debate between Laura Kyrke-Smith and Chris Kane

Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

This is such an important Bill, and I am pleased to support it. He is not in his place, but I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for bringing it forward. What a credit it will be to him if the Bill proceeds. We would also not be here without the work of Dame Andrea Leadsom and all the team at the 1001 Critical Days Foundation, and I put on record my thanks and appreciation to them. I also take the opportunity to wish the most important baby in my life, my little niece Hallie, a very happy first birthday which is coming up next week.

The Bill does vital work putting into law the requirement to ensure that infants, parents, carers and prospective parents receive the support that they need at this vital time in life: the start of a baby’s life. We have heard many examples of how this would be transformative for the babies and families who lie at the heart of the Bill, and rightly so, because evidence is compelling that the care that a baby receives in those first 1,001 days from pregnancy to aged two, when those vital neural connections are forming in their brains, can affect their life chances in so many ways, from education to health to earnings potential.

My contribution will focus not on the babies, but on their parents and carers, specifically pregnant and new mums and their partners, and the mental health challenges that they can face at this time of life. I believe the Bill will improve the support available to them. However, babies and their parents are connected, of course, because we cannot separate a baby’s wellbeing from the wellbeing of those caring for them. When parents are struggling with their mental health, the effects can be felt throughout the family.

As compelling evidence from the Maternal Mental Health Alliance and others shows, perinatal mental illness is associated with increased risk of poor emotional, intellectual, social and physical development in children. It can disrupt attachment and bonding during the period when secure relationships are laying the foundations for a child’s future health and wellbeing, but when parents and carers are supported, and when babies experience that secure attachment as a result, babies go on to thrive.

Perinatal mental health is an issue close to my heart, as I have said in the Chamber before. I lost my close friend Sophie to suicide after the birth of her third daughter, when her little girl was just 10 weeks old. I have introduced my own Bill to stop more people suffering in the way that she did. My Bill would require that every pregnant and new mum has a mental health check-in, and I am continuing to push that forward. No matter how many times I speak about it, the sadness and shock of losing Sophie does not lessen, because she struggled more than anyone should have to at that time of life, but too many people are still struggling in the way that she did.

For many families, a new baby is time for excitement and joy, and I am so glad when that is the case, but for many others, it is time that can be marked by anxiety, depression, trauma, isolation and, in some cases, severe mental illness. Across the UK, about one in four women experience a mental health challenge during that time. That means that families in every community and every constituency are living with the realities of perinatal mental illness. This can include post-natal depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and, in some cases, severe illnesses, such as post-partum psychosis. These challenges can affect first-time parents, as well as experienced parents—for Sophie, it was her third time as a new mum. They can come quite unexpectedly, including for those with no history of severe mental illness.

We have spoken about how babies’ brains are forming in those 1,001 days, but a lot is happening for a mum at that point too. There is a brilliant book by Lucy Jones called “Matrescence”, which I recommend to everyone. It sets out the profound hormonal, neural and cognitive changes that occur during motherhood, which have consequences for people’s sense of identity and self in much the same way as happens to teenagers during adolescence. There have been some brilliant advocates for the idea of matrescence, including Maggie Gordon-Walker, who I want to acknowledge.

All of that creates challenges to mental health, which can have incredibly serious consequences. There is a great report by MBRRACE-UK—Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK—called “Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care” that shows that suicide remains the leading cause of death among women between six weeks and year after birth. That is a life lost, but it is also a family broken. That is the shocking and sobering reality of families not getting the recognition, understanding and support that they need at this time. That has consequences, not just for the people at the heart of the situation, but way beyond that, for the economy and society. The London School of Economics estimates the long-term cost of untreated perinatal mental health problems to be about £8.1 billion every year. Significantly, about three quarters of that cost—72%—arises from the long-term impact on the children’s ability to learn, earn, be healthy and care for themselves later in life.

Correcting all that has to start with raising awareness. Despite a lot of great advocacy and awareness-raising work from many organisations, including the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, Jo Cruse at Delivering Better, and the Hearts and Minds Partnership, we still recognise and understand perinatal mental health poorly. As a result, people continue to suffer in silence. They are afraid of being judged and fear that admitting that they are struggling could somehow be seen as a failure, or they might recognise that something is not right but they simply do not know where to turn for help.

Awareness alone is not enough; we need support too, and that is where the Bill comes in. I will touch briefly on four ways that it could make a real difference. First, the principle behind it is that everyone in England—regardless of who they are, where they are from and what their background is—is equally deserving of support at that time in life in the eyes of the law. The reality today is that not all pregnant and new mums get the same support. The evidence shows that mums from black and minority ethnic communities face much poorer outcomes and greater barriers to accessing care. Younger mothers, families in poverty and deprivation, and those living with the effects of domestic abuse or other past trauma encounter additional obstacles and worse outcomes, and that is simply not acceptable. The aim of the Bill is to enable every family to access high-quality support. That important principle is supported by many experts, including the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The second important point about the Bill is the period that it focuses on. For someone struggling with their mental health, it is vital that the support kicks in at the very early stages of the 1,001 days. As others have said, the systems too often kick in when people are at crisis point, but for support to be effective it has to kick in early. It is about identifying the vulnerability early; building trusted relationships with the midwives, GPs and health visitors providing care; providing continuity of care; and ensuring that mums feel seen, heard and supported long before the difficulties become overwhelming. There must be the possibility of being referred to specialist services if necessary. Once the baby gets to the age of two, it can be too late. They have already formed their early understanding of the world, and the family has had to get through that really tough first phase, so that time period is critical.

Thirdly, it is absolutely right that the Bill extends the statutory support in a wide-ranging way across infants, parents and carers. It is not enough to focus on just one member or one part of the family. On mental health, my speech has obviously focused on pregnant and new mums, but it is equally vital to consider the needs of fathers, partners and other carers at that time. There was a very worrying Samaritans study from Wales recently, which showed for the first time, in an evidence-based way, the really high rates of suicide among new dads and the many barriers to support that they face. That should compel us to act.

There are good examples out there of good support to dads. I was talking to the mental health midwives at my local hospital, Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury, and they use something called the DadPad, which has a book that comes alongside it. It has easily accessible information and advice about how dads can look after themselves and give their child the best start in life. That good advice is out there, but it is not routinely available, so I see the potential of the Bill ensuring that everyone who needs that guidance can access it.

Fourthly, it is right that the nature of the support in the Bill is very broadly defined. It is obviously for the Government to work further on. A model of broad, cross-cutting, joined-up support is embedded in the Government’s Best Start family hubs programme. I am proud that they have introduced it and are driving it forward. It is already benefiting my constituents, and the Best Start family hub Elmhurst is opening this month. With those mental health teams, infant feeding support teams, SEND support teams, maternity care, primary care, health visitors and the voluntary sector all co-located in one place, families will be able to access the joined-up support that they need, whatever that might be.

There is also such an important opportunity for the voluntary sector to dock in with other services on offer from the local authority and the NHS. Often, that sector is overlooked in these debates, but if we did not have such brilliant active voluntary and community organisations across our constituencies, a lot more women and families would fall through the cracks.

[Chris Kane]

I thank my hon. Friend for her compelling speech and for sharing so much about her own story. On the Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, we often get a sense that all this great operational learning is going on in communities, but it does not always turn into strategic learning back in Parliament. The Bill talks about a report of the year, but if the report comes back and no one reads it, we cannot learn how to do better. Does my hon. Friend agree that learning the great lessons that are going on in our communities is important for us, and that we should not lose sight of that in the Bill? We should learn at our level from the lessons going on in communities, to help what we do here.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith]

I agree, and my hon. Friend makes an important point. We see these pockets of good practice across the country, but too often they are not flagged up through the system. Certainly, we in this House do not become aware of them. Part of the potential of the Bill is that, through those reporting mechanisms, we will get a better sense of what works and what does not, with the potential to roll that out and scale it up.

I pay tribute to the brilliant PANDAS group in my constituency, which offers tea and coffee, and toys for the kids, but is also a really supportive space for new mums to meet other mums who may also be struggling. There are such organisations across the country—Mothers for Mothers in Bristol does fantastic work along those lines. I went to a wonderful session by Breathe Melodies, which works across London to harness the power of community and singing to bring mums—and dads now—together and to provide that support. Sport in Mind is more about getting people out and walking, and also talking. There are fantastic voluntary groups, and we need to think about plugging them into the support that would be provided through the Bill.

As others have said powerfully, a baby cannot tell us when they are struggling or when their family is struggling. They cannot navigate a complex and fragmented healthcare system or advocate for improved services. A baby relies on us, as legislators, to ensure that that support exists. That is why the Bill is so important. My ask as we consider this legislation is that we recognise that supporting perinatal mental health and, more broadly, the mental health of parents and carers, is fundamental to that ambition and such a key determinant of whether the infants, parents and carers at the heart of the Bill go on to thrive.