Baby Loss

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate, and I thank the co-sponsors and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to happen on the Floor of the House today. I also thank everyone who has spoken so far and so bravely, whether that is sharing their own experience or that of their constituents. These debates have a true impact.

This issue is of profound personal significance to me, as it is to so many families up and down the country. Alongside Tommy’s, many Members of this House, Myleene Klass MBE, Sands and the Miscarriage Association, I have been campaigning for five years for simple changes. First, I want to recognise those for whom this is not an abstract discussion but a reflection of one of the hardest chapters of their lives. To every parent who has experienced the heartbreak of losing a baby, I want to say, “Your loss matters, and your voice matters.”

Time and again, investigations into maternity and neonatal care have revealed the same issues: poor communication, missed warning signs and families left to fight for answers. National standards of care are not being followed, and too often bereaved parents are left wondering whether lessons will ever truly be learned. That is why the forthcoming national investigation into maternity and neonatal services is so important. It must drive lasting change, and I urge the Secretary of State, who I am so pleased to see in his place, to ensure that there is clear national oversight of how any recommendations are implemented. The investigation must also take ambitious approaches to improving maternal heath and reducing baby loss.

We need a focused national strategy that sets new maternity safety ambitions, tackles inequalities and ensures consistency across all services, and I want to briefly mention infertility services. I have decided that locally commissioned services are simply not good enough—they are not fit for purpose. In some places, you get nothing; in other places, you get three cycles of in vitro fertilisation, as NICE suggests. In other places, you have to pay thousands of pounds if you are LGBT. As shown by “Joy”, the Netflix story that was told so well, the same backward thoughts about infertility treatment still exist in local commissioning boards.

That is no more so than in South Yorkshire, where the NHS trust is currently consulting on—I am quoting from the website—views on

“how many cycles of IVF should be provided to people in South Yorkshire”

and on

“how much gluten-free…produce should be prescribed”.

I have coeliacs in my family and understand the struggle, but to compare that to the loss of babies, which many couples who go through IVF will have suffered, is simply not good enough. The trust’s own numbers show that the saving from reducing two cycles to one would be only £280,000 a year. That would be less than 2p per person in the whole ICB area. Let us take that money centrally, so that no matter where you live in the UK, you have access to three chances to start a family. You might have suffered five miscarriages, three miscarriages, baby loss or stillbirth. You might be being told by your doctor not to try for a baby given the risk to your life, and only to get support through IVF.

It is simply not good enough, and fertility services are also diagnostic. I know people who have had endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, blocked tubes, endometrial cancers, polyps or fibroids discovered not through going to a gynaecologist, but through going to a fertility doctor. We should value that and not just see it as an excess cost. I think fertility services should be taken back centrally and provided on that basis.