Baby Loss Awareness Week

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Anna Dixon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her amazing work on this issue over many years, campaigning for families in her area who have been harmed. Families often face long and lonely legal battles after the grieving and damage that has been done during the child’s care. Clinicians and organisations can often become defensive and risk-averse, particularly in this environment. Does she agree that, as part of the changes she is calling for, we also need to look at NHS Resolution, the clinical negligence scheme, and stop making it a fight for parents to get answers to their questions?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. This is a very powerful debate, but it is limited to three hours. I will not be able to get all the Members in if speeches are long, but I appreciate the sensitivity.

[Michelle Welsh]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

Bereavement care also needs proper scrutiny. A poster on a wall cannot demonstrate that a family has received compassionate care. Families need appropriate spaces, trained staff, sensitive communication and support after they leave hospital. Where families wish, equipment such as cuddle cots can allow them precious times with their baby. Parents should be supported to make their own choices about holding their baby, creating memories and saying goodbye. Nobody should be rushed, and nobody should be made to feel there is a correct way to grieve. The quality of that care should never depend on which hospital door a family walks through.

I also want to raise the No Breath Required campaign. In England and Wales, coroners generally cannot investigate a stillbirth. Their jurisdiction depends on whether a baby was born showing signs of life. That distinction can leave families in very similar circumstances with different routes to independent scrutiny. The need for answers does not disappear because a baby was stillborn. We should give coroners the power to investigate stillbirths, with appropriate safeguards, expertise and resources. We have seen the harm caused when inadequate reviews fail to identify what went wrong or prevent it from happening again. An extension of coroners’ powers must sit within wider reform, with sufficient capacity, specialist understanding and compassionate support for families.

We must also recognise that some losses occur despite good care. Every family deserves an honest explanation, support and the opportunity to ask questions, and that support must continue beyond discharge. Grief does not end when a hospital episode closes; it follows people home into work, relationships and, sometimes, subsequent pregnancy. Families must have access to bereavement and mental health support for as long as they need it. They should not have to prove that they are struggling badly enough to deserve help.

Bereaved and harmed families have already given us so much. Their testimony has exposed failures, their persistence has driven reviews and their determination has brought us to this point. They should never have needed to become campaigners to make the system listen. As the Government and the taskforce move forward, those families’ voices must remain central, and our promises must be tested against their experience. We need time to care, power to act and responsibility to answer.

Last year I said, “Let grief be the engine of change.” This year, we must show families where that change is happening. Families have carried the grief; it is time that the system carried the responsibility. Baby Wynter, baby Harriet, baby Sebastian, baby Koupar, baby Teddy, baby Quinn, baby Aubrey, baby Grace, baby Poppy, baby Dexter, baby Luna and baby Ladybird—we must remember every baby, support every family, and do everything in our power to prevent avoidable loss.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. We now have a speaking limit of seven minutes.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. The speaking limit has dropped to six minutes. I do not want to interrupt anyone’s speeches, but using “you” and “your” is not good form. You are speaking through the Chair, and please remember that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. With colleagues withdrawing, we have a few more minutes on the clock, so Back Benchers are now on an eight-minute speaking limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Turmaine (Watford) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham). I pay tribute to all Members who have made such emotional, moving and powerful contributions this evening.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned continuity of care. I must confess to experiencing something of a thrill when, quite soon after being elected to this place in July 2024, I found myself in a Committee Room in Portcullis House next to Professor Chris Whitty, discussing continuity of care. It may not surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to hear that he also thinks continuity of care is a good idea, as do many people in the Chamber. The right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) mentioned the importance of a well-functioning NHS team to ensuring decent outcomes. I saw this last week, when I visited my local hospital to see a team of surgeons and other staff delivering really good outcomes by operating a robot to remove a gall bladder from a patient. Having a well-integrated team is absolutely vital.

This is an important debate. Those experiencing baby loss have an especially tragic bereavement. The loss of a loved one or friend is always tragic, and something to be sympathised with in solidarity, but those experiencing the loss of a baby are particularly deserving of our kindness, sympathy and support. There is the life cut short; there is the potential that has disappeared; and the joy of growing and living together—of shared love and laughter—is relegated to the imagination, and the hopes of what might have been.

The Secretary of State’s intention is clear: to support women and families let down by maternity services. I am glad to see that early loss is being recognised through the baby loss certificate scheme, which covers pregnancy loss before 24 weeks. The Government are investing in services to support families who are dealing with the tragedy of baby loss, so that every integrated care board can fund specialist bereavement midwives and bereavement services. In Hertfordshire, where my Watford constituency is located, many organisations are doing amazing work to support those grieving a miscarriage or the loss of a baby, including Alternatives Watford, West Herts Hospitals Charity, Petals, CHUMS, Sands and Tommy’s, as well as GP practices and the county council, which has a network for staff who have experienced baby loss; it provides much-needed support.

In a former career, I worked in health and social care, including for the Hertfordshire safeguarding children’s board. From my experience of supporting serious case reviews into the death of a child, or the child death overview panel, it is important to recognise the engagement of health staff in determining what has gone wrong, and we should acknowledge that. I welcome the efforts of the Government and those supporting this work to minimise the incidence of baby loss and to ensure that nobody goes unsupported when experiencing it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I start by declaring my interests as a member and former co-chair of both the baby loss and maternity APPGs and a member of the birth trauma APPG, and by thanking the hon. Members for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for securing this important debate to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week. It has been an emotional evening listening to the contributions of Members across the House, who have either bravely shared their own stories and those of their constituents, or have worked incredibly hard to bring about improvements in maternity and neonatal care and in bereavement care for those families who face the loss of a baby and, in some cases, both those things.

Since I was elected in December 2021, far too many reports have come to Parliament that detail the unimaginable pain of families who have lost or had injured babies or mums. From Shrewsbury and Telford, which impacted families in my community, some of whom were my close friends, and which I have spoken about on a number of occasions in this place, through East Kent, Nottingham and the many hospitals included in the Amos review, and new inquiries into Leeds and Sussex, there have been many reports and far too little action. The silent scandal of this country’s maternity crisis has unfolded in plain sight. Maternal deaths are higher than at any point in the last decade, and 65% of maternity units are not rated as adequately safe by the CQC, which has warned that there is a risk of normalising serious harm in maternity care.

The latest Embrace UK report shows that women from black ethnic backgrounds are nearly three times as likely to die during or up to six weeks after pregnancy compared with women from white ethnic backgrounds, with women from Asian ethnic backgrounds also facing a slightly increased risk. Stillbirth rates for babies born to mothers living in the most deprived areas remain significantly higher than those in the least deprived areas. Women in the most deprived areas are also twice as likely to die during or shortly after pregnancy compared with those in the least deprived areas.

The 2015 national maternity safety ambition aimed to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirth, neonatal and maternal deaths, and brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth by 2025. We have missed the target on that, and targets for the future have not been set, and they must be. Every year, £1.3 billion is spent on medical negligence payments. We are spending the equivalent of a third of the whole maternity budget on the price of failure, rather than keeping mums and babies safe in the first place. We know that many experienced clinicians are leaving the profession, burnt out by exhaustion, the crumbling units they work in and the lack of time for training for the increasingly complex pregnancies and births that they must deal with.

I welcome the fact that the Government, despite there having been three Secretaries of State this year, have shown commitment to improving maternity services. Their agreement to create the statutory role of a maternity commissioner and to legislate for that in the Health Bill as it makes its way through the other place is undoubtedly a good step, and I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Secondary Care, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for their constructive and collaborative approach to making that happen.

The Government have also established a maternity taskforce and commissioned Baroness Amos’s review—all welcome acknowledgment that improvement in maternity services should be of the highest priority. But there have unfortunately been missteps, too. Removing the ringfence from service development funding—the very fund designed to support enhanced care for complex pregnancies, multiple births and bereavement care and support—is incomprehensible in the light of the concerns that have been so widely raised, and I call on the Secretary of State to reinstate it.

Liberal Democrats have put improvements in maternity care at the heart of our work in this Parliament and have proposed a package to tackle the crisis, starting with safe staffing on every ward. Often, things go wrong at night or at weekends when the on-call consultant is at home—because, as we all know, babies have famously not grasped the importance of respecting normal working hours. We would ensure that a consultant obstetrician is present 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that one-to-one midwifery care for every woman in labour is available, so that the early signs of complication are recognised quickly.

Many pregnancies and births are more complex now. Training teams to deal with that is essential, and we call on the Government to introduce mandatory, regularly updated salaried training for all staff. For those in leadership roles, we would work on a culture of openness, learning from mistakes and speaking up when it is obvious that things are going wrong.

Many Members this evening have talked about better support throughout pregnancy, ensuring that high-risk mums have the right team around them from the start and that, crucially, women are listened to throughout their pregnancy. We would tackle the huge disparities in outcomes for black, Asian and disabled women and those from deprived backgrounds through better training to understand risk, alongside investment in the public health measures that are so critical to tackle some of the drivers of these disparities.

Finally, we urge the Government to recognise that, tragically, not every pregnancy goes to plan. We urge them to record all miscarriages so that the issue is no longer hidden, to support every woman who has had a miscarriage, not make them wait for their third one, and to invest in ensuring there is bereavement care for every family who needs it. There is, of course, undoubtedly a cost to all this, but it is less than half of that eye-watering medical negligence bill.

The Thirlwall inquiry highlights the failure of the NHS to learn from mistakes and implement recommendations from detailed investigations undertaken when things go wrong. It has highlighted how constant top-down reorganisations of the NHS have prevented progress and obscured the monitoring of improvements, and it says that a lack of political will has led to a failure to overcome the barriers to change for the better.

I have heard colleagues from all parties on both sides of the House agree on the urgent need to improve maternity services this evening, and I am encouraged by the steps that the Government have taken so far, but now it is time for action. I am ready to work with colleagues from all parties to tackle this crisis, and to ensure that no other family has to endure the pain of the avoidable loss of their beloved baby. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State that the Government have the political will to do the same.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call shadow Minister Dr Caroline Johnson.