Baby Loss

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Antoinette Sandbach

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I know many good examples of that. I shall talk a little later about the Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where a midwife together with the chaplain have developed the most amazing suite of resources to support parents. They have tailor-made the information available specifically for the loss that parents face—whether a miscarriage or a stillbirth—and it was all done in their own time, unpaid and unsupported. There is that level of dedication. For every area where there is bad practice, there are fantastic and dedicated clinicians, midwives and indeed chaplains, providing support to bereaved parents.

Like George’s father, members of the all-party parliamentary group want to make a difference. We welcome the Government’s commitment to a 20% reduction in stillbirth rates by 2020 and a halving by 2030 and the additional resources that have been put into the perinatal mortality tool. We are calling for some additional steps which we believe will help to deliver those targets.

The report that we launched yesterday identifies three key aims. The first is prevention. We need a sustained public health campaign that informs parents of the known risks. We know that parents of twins are three times more likely to suffer loss. Black and ethnic minority groups face much higher rates of stillbirth and loss. Mothers over 40, mothers living in poverty, and teenage mothers all have increased risk of stillbirth or neonatal death.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am most grateful to both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) for securing the debate.

A Dwyfor mother asked me to take the opportunity to express the depth of her feeling. She wrote:

“We don’t just suffer the loss of a baby, we lose a toddler, a child, a teenager, birthdays, Christmas days, mother/father’s days the list is endless as is the grief. The pain of losing a child never leaves you.”

She also wanted me to say that she believes that a third-trimester scan would have made a significant difference in her case.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point.

We know that information needs to be targeted at high-risk groups: messages about smoking during pregnancy, risks associated with obesity, and, of course, the importance of not sharing a bed with your baby, and of putting the baby back to sleep. The success of the Back to Sleep campaign, supported by the Lullaby Trust, has shown what can be achieved in reducing sudden infant death. We now need similar information campaigns in relation to stillbirth, Count the Kicks and reduced foetal movement. I welcome the additional steps being taken by the Department of Health—along with the major charities—to highlight avoidable risks, but it is vital for such messages to be targeted at the most at-risk groups in order to have the biggest impact.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Antoinette Sandbach

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I hope that Connecting Cheshire will allow communities to band together and use vouchers in areas where superfast broadband has not yet been delivered. I urge the Secretary of State to allow that flexibility and to require BT to provide the money that would otherwise have been available for connection. I welcome the USO—it is a great step forward—but it must be set at 15 megabits and must also include minimum upload speeds.

Finally, on protecting children, we have heard much about age verification, but an NSPCC report indicated that eight children a day are being groomed online—not through access to child pornography, but through social media. Ofcom needs much better powers to deal with online child grooming and social media sites, such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. When someone is below the age of consent—under 16—there should be parental access or some form of parental portal, but that is completely absent from the Bill. I appreciate that that is difficult when ISPs are located abroad, but with the problem of eight children a day being groomed online not being substantively addressed, other than through the valuable work of organisations such as Childline, we need to be able to close the door that allows abusers into children’s bedrooms.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree that it is a real source of concern that the only way of addressing issues with Facebook for people who have suffered through the misuse of profiles is to go to Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner. We do not have the means to deal with such matters in this country.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

The Secretary of State’s previous role was at the Home Office, which has an interest in online criminality and the vulnerability of children, so I hope that she will take note of the comments made today. There is much to welcome in the Bill. New regulations on data protection, which will largely replace the Data Protection Act 1998, may provide an opportunity to close some of the windows. I urge Ministers to consider such provisions given the large number of online grooming cases and the potentially devastating consequences.

Draft Wales Bill (Morning sitting)

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Antoinette Sandbach

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 General Committees

[Liz Saville Roberts]

It does appear in the Scottish devolution settlement but it appears three times in the draft Bill. In Scotland, it refers to reserved matters but here, it also refers to criminal and private law. That is the significant question.

I challenge anyone to justify making a Government accountable to a judge rather than to a legislature, as the draft Bill effectively promotes. The report released this week by the Wales governance centre at Cardiff University and the constitution unit at UCL states:

“To restrict the choice of National Assembly members in matters likely to form parts of a great many Assembly Acts may be said to undercut their role as primary legislators, and to deny the institution…proper esteem in ‘the union of the nations of Wales and England’.”

The reasons that these mechanisms are listed as reserved is, according to the Secretary of State,

“to protect the unified legal system of England and Wales”.

All the criticisms that the Secretary of State has faced since the publication of the draft Bill—the cries of “unworkable,” “badly drafted,” “overly complex,” and so on—are a consequence of his blind loyalty to preserving the unified legal system, which has almost unanimously been described to the Welsh Affairs Committee by the legal profession as unnecessary, damaging and paradoxical.

Plaid Cymru, along with many legal experts, believes that it would be a sensible and—crucially—sustainable solution to create a separate legal system for Wales and the Welsh legislature. As the Wales governance centre’s report says,

“it would bring Wales more into the mainstream of sub-state constitutional arrangements in the common law world”.

It is noteworthy that that is also the long-term aim of the Labour Welsh Government.

We acknowledge that it would have financial and practical implications that would need careful consideration but, if the UK Government are serious about delivering a devolution settlement that stands the test of time, they need to adopt a long-term approach. Although that would be Plaid Cymru’s preferred solution, we recognise that not all parties have caught up with our position. The same cannot be said, however, of the creation of a so-called distinct but not separate jurisdiction. The evidence that the Welsh Affairs Committee has heard has been overwhelmingly in favour of this solution, as has that heard by the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee in the National Assembly. I suspect that those who remain sceptical of this solution mistakenly fear the practical and financial implications that a separate jurisdiction might have, and do not fully understand—or perhaps do not want to fully understand—the simplicity of what is actually being proposed.

Creating a distinct jurisdiction need not be any more complicated—perhaps this is the definition that we have been looking for—than simply acknowledging in statute the existence of the law of Wales and the law of England that extend to the territory of Wales and the territory of England respectively.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Can the hon. Lady explain why Welsh law does not have that current status and why she feels it needs to be put into statute? Surely it has that status already.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Because we are arguing about the leeway and lock model, and the necessity clauses in criminal and private law, and that is creating so much complication. With this acknowledgment, we could move ahead.