Baby Loss Awareness Week

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ms Nadine Dorries)]

What an important debate this has been, and that is of course thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who has been sitting next to me throughout the debate. In fact, I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury still chairs the APPG on baby loss. This is the fourth year that the House has had this debate, and I hope that my hon. Friends continue to push for it to be held every year, forever. It is such an important time not only to focus on the areas that people feel we should be concentrating on, but also to focus on the achievements and to hear stories from so many people.

In the 10 minutes that I have, I would like to respond to some of the points made. I begin with my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), the former Secretary of State, who, in his usual modest way, omitted to mention the incredible contribution he has made in this area. He spoke passionately about changing from a culture of blame to one of learning; he brought that about in the NHS through his own efforts when, while in the Department of Health and Social Care, he introduced the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch. He instructed it to undertake, I believe, 1,000 maternity investigations a year, including into stillbirths and other mortality issues.

My right hon. Friend asked how we will share lessons learned between trusts and improve patient safety. HSIB has established a process for doing that. The perinatal mortality review annual report will be published on Thursday, as I think he may know. The HSIB annual report will be published in due course. Both reports will begin to share some of the learning from more than 1,500 cases. We are doing more to share information when things go wrong, and as a result of the former Secretary of State’s initiative, when something goes wrong in one trust, we will ensure that it does not go wrong in another. We all hope that will be the outcome of HSIB. We cannot thank him enough, and I am sure we will be mentioning his efforts for many years to come.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke powerfully about her loss. One of the themes of the debate has been mental health and the support that those who have lost a baby, including fathers and others in the family, need at a time of loss. She moved me to tears. She spoke about testing for pre-eclampsia. In April, NHS England announced that it will make the placental growth factor blood test available across the country, in the light of evidence that the test speeds up the diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. I urge her to push for parity in Scotland, so that the same test given to mothers in England is made available to mothers in Scotland. I am sure that other Members will call for that in this place. I know that other Members in this House have suffered loss through pre-eclampsia. It is a dreadful condition. Our objective should be to do all we can to ensure that no mother has to go through that.

[Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)]

The Minister makes a very good point. I pay enormous tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who has done phenomenal work in bringing her experiences to the Chamber. I thank the Minister for her remarks. We may not always see eye to eye, but on this issue, it would be great if her Department and the Scottish Government worked closely together.

[Ms Dorries]

I have already sent a message to my team asking why the test is not being done in Scotland and what we can do to ensure that it is rolled out across the UK. If I can have those conversations with the devolved Administration, I certainly will, and I will certainly push that from my end and in my Department.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I share the sentiments of the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins): collaboration is critical. One of my constituents raised with me concerns about the fact that there was no peer-to-peer support provided by the medical profession. She was dealing with her GP, but she relied for support on the charity SiMBA—Simpson’s Memory Box Appeal—a friend having referred her. Maximum co-operation and support are critical. Hopefully, we can share as much information as possible, so that we avoid people feeling that they are alone, or not being given the support that they need. I was shocked to hear what happened to my constituent. I would be keen to ensure co-operation and to promote it as much as I can.

[Ms Dorries]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, but I only have a few minutes left, so I have to move on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury asked what we are doing to eliminate the stigma around mental health. As the Minister for Mental Health, I can say that we are doing a huge amount. I do not know whether anybody in the Chamber has managed to see it yet, but a campaign video was released this week called “Every Mind Matters”, which the royals kindly voiced over. It was written by Richard Curtis and features many celebrities, including Davina McCall. It is all about people who everybody knows and recognises talking about their own mental health issues, to break down the stigma. That is just one of the many campaigns that are taking place.

As I said in the debate on women’s mental health last week, when somebody breaks their leg, we put a plaster cast on the leg, and that is fine. When someone has a mental health issue, they do not want to talk about it. I hope that the stigma is reducing and that there is parity and equality between mental health and physical health. Campaigns like “Every Mind Matters” are getting us there.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. The really good evidence that was disclosed in the debate about the way in which maternal loss of babies can cause PTSD shows that there needs to be concrete mental health support for parents who have gone through this experience.

[Ms Dorries]

What I will say to my hon. Friend in response is that, in the long-term plan, the NHS commits to

“improve access to and the quality of perinatal mental health care for mothers, their partners and children”.

We have committed in the long-term plan that an additional 24,000 women will have access to specialist perinatal mental health support, including more support for fathers and partners. That is part of the £2.3 billion investment in mental health that this Government recently announced. I will say it again: £2.3 billion. That is over half the annual prisons budget. Of course, some of that money has to be directed towards mothers in this situation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) made an important point about infant mortality in other countries around the world. The Secretary of State for International Development announced a £600 million reproductive health supplies programme to help end preventable deaths of mothers, newborn babies and children in the developing world by 2030. It will give 20 million women and girls access to family planning, prevent 5 million unintended pregnancies each year up to 2025 and focus on the most vulnerable women, including FGM survivors. We are committed to working with Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance, to vaccinate a further 300 million children in the world’s poorest countries by 2025.

My hon. Friend also talked about making maternal mortality a never event. I am not sure that that will be an achievable objective, but NHS England is supporting the establishment of maternal medicine networks, which ensure that women with acute and chronic medical problems have timely access to special advice and care at all stages of their pregnancy.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) spoke about grief. Grief, for me, is the last taboo; it is the one thing that people still do not talk about. People still do not talk about how grief affects them, and I hope that some of the investment we are putting into mental health services and community services will help people to address grief.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) spoke about somebody who works in his office who has raised funds for the Cherished suite, and the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) spoke about the serenity suite. Over 50% of hospitals now have such suites, which are so important. I do not want to reiterate what anybody has said, but the fact that babies are born in a part of a hospital that is traditionally filled with joy is incredibly difficult. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester has told me that it makes such a difference if people have somewhere to go and even to stay overnight with their baby, and where the family can go. Over 50% of hospitals in the UK have these suites, and I am going to ask that these suites are made available in the maternity areas at all the 40 new hospitals that are being built. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I will ask; I will certainly push.

I want to continue with the points raised, and please pull me up if I miss anybody out. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke so passionately—thank you. I know he has spoken in every baby loss debate we have had, and he has also spoken in the past about the important role that chaplains play in such situations. I would like to thank him for his incredible contribution. He asked about the pregnancy loss review. It is currently working with key partners to make recommendations to the Government about improving the care and support that women and families receive when experiencing a pre-24 week gestation baby loss. We are hoping the report will be published in due course and not too long from now.

I would like to speak about an area that I have particularly focused on, which is group B strep support. I have spoken about this many times, and I had my own Adjournment debate on it before I was a Minister. When I arrived in the Department, I set five key priorities, and this is No. 1 in the key priority areas because this in itself will prevent infant mortality. Group B strep is a leading cause of bacterial infection in newborn babies—just to put that on the record. I fully support the review that is taking place, and I hope that it has some further information so that we can make progress on this in, I hope, the not-too-distant future.

The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) spoke about hospices. I have Keech Hospice in my own constituency. I think hospices and their role is slightly outside the debate, bearing in mind the level of investment that we are putting into mental health services and counselling services. Somebody mentioned improving access to psychological therapies and the importance of talking therapies. I hope that any mother or family who needs mental health counselling as a result of baby loss will in future be able to access those services. I will write to her about the role of hospices in this particular area.

I appreciate the support from Members on both sides of the House in relation to the maternity safety ambition. I echo your words, Madam Deputy Speaker, about the tone of this House in such important debates. One of the most important things to come out of the debate today is the importance of learning for improvement and what we are beginning to learn through the perinatal mortality review tool and the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, which I have mentioned, that was introduced by the former Secretary of State.

I would like to remind Members that the NHS is still—and the NHS in the UK is still—the safest place in the world to have a baby: 0.7% of all births result in a stillbirth or a neonatal death. Having said that, on a day like today, 12 babies in England and 15 across the UK will be stillborn or die soon after birth, and many more families will lose a baby through miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and other causes. We are, however, making progress: in 2015, the figure was 17 babies a day. Maternity and neonatal safety initiatives are beginning to improve outcomes, with most of the anticipated impacts still to be realised, as safety improvements are embedded in maternity and neonatal services and as we learn more from research and investigations about which babies die and why.

Finally, as we have discussed, the theme of Baby Loss Awareness Week 2019 is psychological support for those bereaved parents who need it. I understand that a working group is being convened to support the development of maternity outreach clinics that will integrate maternity reproductive health and psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties arising from and directly related to the maternity experience. I will undertake to ask this working group if it could consider extending the maternity experience to those who have lost a child in pregnancy, during labour and childbirth in the neonatal period.

I would like to finish by thanking all the midwives, doctors and healthcare support workers who do such a fantastic job in delivering more than 600,000 babies successfully every year and in helping the parents who, sadly, do not experience the happiness of a healthy baby.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Thank you. What an excellent, calm and constructive debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered baby loss awareness week.