Health Visitors (England)

Debate between Luciana Berger and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the reduction in the number of health visitors in England.

I am grateful to the hon. Members who have come to speak on this important subject. I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for conception to age two—the first 1,001 days. I also chair the board of trustees of the Parent-Infant Foundation, which runs attachment facilities and lobbies for better early intervention around the country.

I will start with some slightly alarming statistics. The cost of perinatal mental ill health in this country has been worked out at £8.1 billion per annum, according to the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, with up to 20% of women experiencing some form of mental health problem during pregnancy or the first 12 months after birth. The cost of child neglect in this country has been estimated at some £15 billion, with 50% of all maltreatment-related deaths and serious injuries occurring to infants and babies under the age of one. We currently spend in excess of £23 billion getting it wrong in those early years, particularly for mums and new babies. That is equivalent to something like half the defence budget.

There are 122,000 babies under the age of one living with a parent who has some form of mental health problem. Amazingly—this statistic came out time and again during conversations on the Domestic Abuse Bill—a third of domestic violence begins during pregnancy, and suicide is one of the leading causes of death for women during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth. About 40% of children in the United Kingdom have an insecure attachment to a parent or carer at the age of 12 months, according to Professor Peter Fonagy and others. Alarmingly, there is a 99% correlation between a teenager experiencing some form of mental illness or depression at the age of 15 or 16 and his or her mother having had some form of perinatal mental ill health during pregnancy. It is that close a correlation, making it that much more important that we make sure that the mums bearing those children, and also fathers, are as happy, settled and healthy as possible in those early stages, from conception to age two.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman set out the costs incurred in trying to prevent such travesties. Does he agree that the figures he refers to are actually conservative estimates? I believe that he was at the launch, quite a number of years ago, of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, which arrived at the figure of more than £8 billion. Is it not the case that, although the economic costs are significant, it is the social and moral reasons that have brought Members from both sides of the House here for this important debate?

[Tim Loughton]

If the hon. Lady is patient, I will come on to the social impacts. I think the MMHA report came out in 2014 or 2015, so obviously things will have moved on, although the birth rate has slightly fallen in that time as well. These are substantial financial figures, but as she says, most important are the social impacts and the impact on the child.

On the physical impacts, our childhood obesity rates are among the worst in Europe, while breastfeeding rates in the United Kingdom are among the lowest in the world. We have rising emergency department attendances by children under the age of five, and infant mortality reductions have recently stalled. Just last week, we had the worrying figures about the dwindling vaccination rates in England in particular, with only 86.4% of children having received a full dose of the MMR vaccine. We have effectively lost our immune status, because the World Health Organisation vaccination target to protect a population from a disease is 95%.

The Children’s Commissioner estimates that, in total, 2.3 million children live with risk because of a vulnerable family background, but that, within that group, more than a third are effectively invisible and not known to services and therefore do not get any support. We are talking about an expensive and widespread problem.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Luciana Berger and Tim Loughton

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I shall come on to talk about measures on vehicles that were introduced in the 2006 Act. Lords amendment 125 refers specifically to private vehicles.

I also welcome Lords amendments 122 and 123, which deal with nicotine-containing products. I agree with the Minister that it is sensible to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s. E-cigarettes can help smokers who are trying to quit, but they should not be available to children, especially when there are so many question marks about the long-term health effects of nicotine and when concern has been expressed that e-cigs might act as gateway products that could lead some young people to take up tobacco smoking.

I am especially pleased to support Lords amendment 121, on proxy purchasing, which will prevent adults from buying cigarettes on behalf of children. Labour proposed that policy by tabling amendments in the other place last year. It is already illegal to buy alcohol on behalf of under-age children, so it does not make sense that the same offence does not apply to tobacco products given that, if they are used as directed, they kill half of all lifetime smokers. I am glad that the Government now agree with us, but I hope that the Minister will be able to share with hon. Members the Government’s rationale for introducing a maximum fine of £2,500, given that the equivalent penalty for the alcohol offence is £5,000.

Let me turn to Lords amendment 125 and the question of protecting children from adults smoking in cars. I pay tribute to everyone who has campaigned for such a measure, especially the British Lung Foundation and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham). I also applaud my noble Friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who tabled the original amendment. Since that amendment was successfully passed, the Government have laid out how that Labour proposal could be written into law. In the final analysis, the decision before the House comes down to a simple question: if we know beyond doubt that passive smoking in an enclosed space can do serious harm to a person’s health and that hundreds of thousands of children are being subjected to passive smoking in a car every single week, and if we know from our experience of similar laws passed in this country and others that legislation can have a major impact by changing behaviour and improving public health, should we act and do something, or stand by and do nothing? We say that we cannot afford not to act.

[Tim Loughton]

By that same token, does the hon. Lady concede that we should criminalise pregnant women who smoke, on the basis that their child is in an even more confined space than a car?

[Luciana Berger]

We are considering a specific provision, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to bring forward further measures, I am sure that the House would wish to debate them. We are talking about children who do not have a choice when travelling in a car.

We all know the dangers of passive smoking, but the reality is that its worst consequences are inflicted predominantly on the very youngest in our society. Children are especially vulnerable to the dangers because they have smaller lungs and faster breathing rates than adults.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luciana Berger and Tim Loughton

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

As I have said, my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for schools is looking at the whole system of home-educated children, and local authorities have the discretion to make those grants where they think it is appropriate but it has never been the role of Government to provide that support to home-educated children. Perhaps the key to all this is to make sure that every school in this country, in the maintained sector in particular, is so good and there is such a good choice that all parents will want to send their children to the local school and will not feel it necessary to home-educate their children.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luciana Berger and Tim Loughton

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

In an earlier answer, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) again deferred to Magic Breakfast, an excellent charity, to plug the massive funding gap that has been left by the Government taking away extended schools money. Magic Breakfast provides 200 schools with free breakfast, yet 3,000 breakfast clubs have been closed across the country and thousands more are under threat. What are the Government going to do about that?

[Tim Loughton]

Let me have another go. Just a few weeks ago, I met the former chairman of Greggs who set up the breakfast club. That company did so not on the basis of how much money the Government were or were not putting into it or because of Government policy, but because it thought that it was the right thing to do, it was in a position to do it and it was good corporate social responsibility. The company did it and it did not take Government money to ensure that companies could step up to the mark and do their bit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luciana Berger and Tim Loughton

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

How many children do not have access to a breakfast club or an after-school club place because of the removal of extended school funding?

[Tim Loughton]

I was delighted to attend in Leeds recently the Magic Breakfast charity, which has done fantastic work. It is a social enterprise that has worked its brilliant magic on schools up and down the country to make sure that kids get a healthy breakfast. We want to see more of that through organisations such as Magic Breakfast. I would hope that the hon. Lady supported such organisations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luciana Berger and Tim Loughton

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. The ContactPoint database that was championed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Barnardo’s is to be scrapped. What assessment has been made of the impact that the removal will have on safeguarding children?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her election. Very soon she will hear further details of the demise of ContactPoint, which was not championed by a great many professionals at the front end, who knew that the bureaucracy added to safeguarding over recent years has contributed to some of the dangers to our children, so we would like to replace it with a much better system. She will hear more details shortly.