Bereavement Counselling

Debate between Matt Warman and Paul Scully

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

“You have a lot of misfortune in your family.” Those, Mr Speaker, are the words that a registrar spoke to me when I registered the death of my mother, who died 20 years ago today, aged 53. Kind, compassionate, understated, he said them because just six weeks previously I had registered the death of my father.

I was, Mr Speaker, 27. I was not a child, but I was, I think, too young to know how to bear some of the sadness that I felt in 2009. Some people have, by the age of 27, borne far more emotion: they have married, had families, served and sometimes died for their countries, and in many instances they have also buried both their parents. However, 27 is young to be an orphan in the western world. I struggled to admit it then and I struggle to admit it now, but I found it impossibly hard. I should have looked for help, because grief makes us all angry, irrational, upset and difficult.

Perhaps too many of us in the House think that that strength is incompatible with weakness. Perhaps too many of us are stubborn. It is often said that that which does not kill us makes us stronger; perhaps that which kills those closest to us can make us stronger still, but few can do it on their own. In this Adjournment debate, I want simply to say to those who struggle with the loss of loved ones—and even the loss of close family members who are not so obviously loved—that there is already help out there, and to say, “You are strongest when you take it up, and go to the doctor or just talk to friends.” However, it is also true that more can be done by the Government and by others.

This week, we celebrate Mother’s Day. Mothers up and down the country will be appreciated through cards, breakfast in bed, and often questionable artwork from their children. For some, though—myself included—that day is a reminder of what we have lost. To use the modern jargon, it is a trigger. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for letting my personal circumstances have some influence on the parliamentary calendar. Changing it seems to be all the rage at the moment, but you know that MPs are surely at their best when we draw on our personal experiences.

The coming of Mother’s Day gives this debate a broader relevance, because I also want to raise the question of what more we can do in government to support those who have been bereaved, and how we can encourage wider society to make small, seemingly insignificant changes that can prevent immense upset for so many people. The bereavement charity Cruse currently claims on its home page that it can “help this Mother’s Day”, and that is hugely welcome, but such is the volume that the charity has suspended its email help service, and its phone lines are not open 24/7. It takes more than charity to tackle bereavement; it takes society, in all its little family platoons.

The Government have done great work in introducing bereavement counselling for parents who lose children, thanks in part to my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), as well as other Members on both sides of the House. I am not calling for a similar kind of bereavement leave for everyone, because businesses, in truth, are largely respectful, and they are also hugely varied. However, I know from personal experience that many people do not feel the true impact of their loss for weeks, months, or even, in some instances, years after the person whom they have loved has passed away. Often they are in shock or trying to be strong for others, and that is on top of all the mundane considerations that have to be dealt with in such circumstances.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech, and I know how proud his parents would have been to witness him doing so. I know about the delay that he has mentioned. My father died 30 years ago this year, of mesothelioma, and I remember reading my mother’s diary, in which she was crying out for help nine months later. It is incumbent on us to recognise that delay, and I appreciate everything that my hon. Friend is saying.

[Matt Warman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and that is why in some ways I am calling on the Government to have ongoing support for those who are recently bereaved and an open-ended offer of counselling on the NHS which can be accessed when they are ready, not at the easiest point for the NHS.