Children and Bereavement

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I too thank Mark and Winston’s Wish for their work with bereaved children and all the practical help they provide. I also thank John Adams, who is trying to make something good come out of something absolutely terrible. I am grateful to everyone who signed the petitions that brought about this important and sobering debate.

When we think about these issues, we naturally think about people we know who are either going through or have been through terrible bereavements. I have a family friend with two boys the same age as my children; they are dealing with the loss of a wife and mother, and they all deserve a medal just for getting through the day. We also think about the ways that people overcome the adversity of these situations. I have a friend who life was shaped by losing his father at a young age, but he has made his life more extraordinary; he has become a wonderful, very strong person as a result of that early terrible experience.

Hon. Members shared similar examples. The hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) was incredibly open and told a compelling story about her experiences. She has been there; she is trying to take those terrible experiences and make something good out of them. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) has had an extraordinary life in many ways and is an incredible person; he too has taken a hard thing and made something good of it.

I pay tribute to all other Members who have taken part in this important debate. The hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) did a brilliant job of setting out the situation. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) made some compelling points, particularly about the joining up of data, and the hon. Members for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) made really important speeches.

To give a bit of a sense of hope, I want to mention some of the changes that have happened in recent years. The 2017 Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health set in train the provision of more support in schools. That included the offer to every state school in England of a grant for a senior mental health lead to start the process of improving mental health support in our schools. That was then built on in more recent years by the rolling out of mental health support teams in schools and colleges in England, helping more young people access that incredibly important support. When we left office we had got to about 400 mental health support teams in schools and colleges across England. I know the current Government will want to continue to roll out that support more widely.

I remember from my time as a Health Minister the way we were changing the treatment of mental health—first the commitment to give it parity of esteem with physical health and the mental health service standards, and then a 50% increase in the amount of money that we spent on it between 2018 and now. I do not take away from the fact that the demand is ever growing—there is still unmet need out there—but one of the important things that comes from this debate, of course, is that the resource is of no use unless we can connect it to the young people in need. The hon. Member for Walthamstow gave powerful examples of children who have literally seen their parents murdered. It seems the most obvious thing in the world that support would swing into action at that point, but it does not because we do not have that joined-up approach to data.

That was something that the last Government was working on from 2016. There were ongoing efforts to try to build a unique child identifier. I know that the current Government—this is not something we have any ideological disagreement about—want to finish that work and give us a joined-up approach. Through the private Member’s Bill sponsored by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West, we have the opportunity. The Department has the exciting opportunity of primary legislation, if it is needed, to make things happen. We can start to bring together the things that it seems so obvious should happen. We can bring together the knowledge that is dispersed through different bits of the public sector in our schools, our coroners and so on into a proper structured approach to help young people going through a hellish situation.

I pay tribute to the people who signed the petition to make this debate happen and to all the people, some of whom are here today, who have worked on this for many years to provide transformative help and who have excellent ideas, which I know the Government will want to take up. We will support them and the Government in doing that.