Covid-19 Update

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I declare that I have diabetes. One in three people who have died from covid had diabetes, yet it has been unclear to those with diabetes whether they are eligible for a third vaccine. Can the Minister clarify whether all groups, including group 6, will be offered a booster? Will that be urgently communicated to people suffering from diabetes?

[Maggie Throup]

The booster has been offered to all those in cohorts 1 to 9, so cohort 6 is included in that.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

The hon. Member and I have spoken about this issue. Since that conversation, I have taken her Bill to the Employment Minister, so I hope that we will hear more about it later in the year.

Despite our making good progress, more needs to be done if the Government’s ambition to halve baby deaths by 2025 is to be met. If the current trajectory of reducing stillbirths is maintained, England may be off meeting that 2025 ambition. The Health and Social Care Committee report noted:

“The improvements in rates of stillbirths and neonatal deaths are good but are not shared equally among all women and babies. Babies from minority ethnic or socioeconomically deprived backgrounds continue to be at significantly greater risk of perinatal death than their white or less deprived peers.”

Babies should not be at higher risk simply because of their parents’ postcode, ethnicity or income. I will let my APPG co-chair and Chair of the Select Committee speak to the findings of the report. However, it appears that health inequalities in maternity outcomes have been known about for more than 70 years, yet there are still no evidence-based interventions taking place to reduce the risks.

Continuity of carer could significantly improve outcomes for women from ethnic minorities and those living in deprived areas. Way back in 2010, the Marmot review proposed a strategy to address the social determinants of health through six policy objectives, with the highest priority objective being to give every child the best start in life. Marmot noted that in utero environments affect adult health. Maternal health—including stress, diet, drug and alcohol abuse, and tobacco use during pregnancy—has a significant influence on foetal and early brain development. Midwives have a key role in promoting public health. Individual needs and concerns can be better addressed when midwives know the woman and her family, and continuity of carer is a key enabler of that. This public health work is of most benefit to vulnerable and at-risk families, who may require more time and tailored resources. Additional work is required to address the needs of these groups, because they are simply more at risk.

As well as improving clinical outcomes for mothers and babies, continuity of carer models can also result in cost savings compared with traditional models of care, because there are fewer premature babies, so fewer neonatal cot days are required; the incremental cost per pre-term child surviving to 18 years compared with a term survivor is estimated at nearly £23,000, and most of the additional costs are likely to occur in the early years of a child’s life; there are fewer obstetric interventions, with women 10% less likely to have an instrumental birth; and there are fewer epidurals and so on.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member share a concern that has been raised with me by midwives—that the term “continuity of carer” has been misinterpreted by some trusts, with multiple midwives seeing people in their early appointments to increase the chance that that person will see the same midwife in hospital?

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Although it would be fantastic to have just one midwife, continuity of carer is actually more likely to mean two midwives or a very small team of midwives. The idea is that the patient can trust that small team, open up to them more and work with them for their own health and the health of their baby.

A continuity of carer model can assist with outside issues affecting a pregnancy, including by picking up on signs of domestic abuse. Sands, the bereavement charity, is calling for an additional Government-funded confidential inquiry into tackling inequalities in this area. Confidential inquiries have been crucial in driving down maternal and perinatal death rates in some groups. These in-depth reviews of all case notes conclude within a finite period and with solid recommendations. Previous confidential inquiries—for example, into term stillbirths and deaths in labour—have transformed our understanding of the changes needed to make care safer, and have contributed significantly to reducing deaths in some groups.

The additional risks faced by women from black and minority ethnic groups have been exacerbated by covid, and this highlights the urgent need to improve equity in maternity. The UK Obstetric Surveillance System study found that more than half of pregnant women admitted to hospital during the pandemic with a covid infection in pregnancy were from an ethnic background.

In June 2020, the chief midwifery officer, Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, wrote to all NHS midwifery services highlighting the impact of covid-19, and the additional risks faced by women and babies from ethnic minorities. The letter called on the services to take four specific actions to minimise this additional risk: increase support of at-risk pregnant women, including by ensuring that clinicians have a lower threshold to review, admit and consider women from ethnic backgrounds; reach out and reassure women from ethnic backgrounds, with tailored communications; ensure that hospitals discuss vitamin supplements and nutrition in pregnancy, particularly vitamin D; and ensure that all providers record on maternity information systems the ethnicity of every woman, as well as other risk factors, such as living in a deprived postcode area, co-morbidities and so on.

The national maternity review’s 2016 report “Better Births” highlighted the increased risk of twins and multiple births. Tamba—now known as the Twins Trust—and the National Childbirth Trust told the report that there needs to be greater recognition of high-risk groups, such as those who have multiple births. Some 10% to 15% of such babies have an unexpected admission to a neonatal unit. The Multiple Births Foundation has said that risks and complications associated with multiple births are still poorly understood by the public and are underestimated by professionals. Multiple births have gone up and the mortality rate is higher among people who have those pregnancies. Again, more research is needed to understand better the risks posed by multiple births. Owing to the increase in fertility treatment and the increased maternal age, twins and multiple births are on the increase, so we must do better to ensure better outcomes.

I again thank colleagues who are here today, and those who have worked so hard in this sector to ensure that babies and their families have the very best outcomes. There is a lot of work still to do. I look forward to my engagement with the new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who I know will share our passion and use her vast experience to advance these causes.

We approach this year’s Baby Loss Awareness Week with events being held around the country and reflection in our hearts. The annual wave of light gives those of us who have suffered a loss the opportunity to light a candle in memory of our babies at the same time. It is a powerful signal, with thousands of people sharing messages and photos of their candles, showing just how many families are suffering with their own grief. This issue matters to every single Member of Parliament; it affects us all.

Let us use this opportunity to speak openly about our children, and to ensure that fewer and fewer families have to suffer this experience in the future. I am proud to lead a debate in this place that shows Parliament and parliamentarians at their very best. This important issue rises above party divisions, and, as we have seen today, the compassion of Members towards one another shines through.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). She spoke about her own personal experience and her rainbow baby. I do not think the term existed when I was born, but I am my mum’s rainbow baby, and it was lovely to hear my hon. Friend’s speech. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) on her powerful and courageous speech, and on all the work she has been doing since she was elected.

Baby Loss Awareness Week gives us all an opportunity to think about families that have suffered that tragedy and what can be done to help. We have heard a number of very moving stories in this debate, and I cannot begin to imagine how painful that experience must be for bereaved parents. I appreciate how difficult it is for people to be open in public about the loss of a baby or a pregnancy. According to the Baby Loss Awareness Week alliance, one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and 14 babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth every day. One of the most powerful things to help those who have experienced that loss is to do everything possible to stop the same thing from happening to other parents.

My constituency of High Peak is home to some inspiring and hardworking maternity teams and bereavement organisations, and I wish in particular to talk about one organisation, and about my constituent, Ciara Curran, who asked me to share her story. Ciara lost her baby daughter Sinead 11 years ago in April 2010 due to pre-term pre-labour rupture of the membranes, also known as PPROM. That condition is when the waters break before 37 weeks of pregnancy, and it puts mother and baby at risk of infection. After such a devastating loss, Ciara went on to set up an organisation called Little Heartbeats to help women who have lost a baby to PPROM, and to ensure that pregnant mothers receive the best possible care if diagnosed with that condition.

Little Heartbeats has worked with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to produce clinical guidelines and patient information leaflets to help prevent the loss of babies from PPROM. It has also launched studies into the impact of PPROM, as well as possible treatments such as stem cell patches. In recognition of the work done by Ciara and her team, Little Heartbeats received the Butterfly Award for best support organisation in 2017, and it was shortlisted for The Sun’s NHS Who Cares Wins health awards this year. It is amazing to see someone who has dealt with such loss respond with tremendous courage and compassion.

However, we still need greater awareness and a clearer understanding of PPROM, helping us to better identify and treat it. I sincerely hope that the Health and Social Care Committee will look into how the condition can be better managed, and learn from the stories of women such as Ciara who have lost babies to PPROM. I have written to the Chair of that Committee, who is in his place today, on that point. He gave a remarkably powerful speech, and I sincerely hope the Minister listened carefully to it.

We need to make improvements to antenatal and maternity care more widely. That is why I am campaigning for an improved maternity unit and antenatal clinic for Tameside General Hospital, which serves my constituents in places such as Glossop, Hadfield, Charlesworth, Gamesley and Tintwistle. The Charlesworth building at Tameside Hospital houses the current maternity unit and antenatal clinic. Originally built in 1971, it has poor insulation and problems with overheating that affect sensitive clinical equipment, including incubators for new-born babies, and impact on the wellbeing of patients and staff alike. Capital investment is badly needed to improve the comfort of patients and staff by improving insulation and providing new welfare stations and waiting areas. That will also deliver better care for mothers and babies by ensuring that clinical equipment is not overworked. I very much hope that Ministers will carefully consider Tameside Hospital’s bid for that crucial project as part of the health infrastructure plan, which alongside the planned new urgent care centre at Tameside, the proposed emergency care campus at Stepping Hill Hospital, and the long-planned new health centre for Buxton, would make a significant difference to healthcare provision locally.

I thank all the doctors, nurses, midwives, researchers, and organisers who do so much to address this challenge. Ultimately, the NHS cannot deliver world-class care without the dedication and perseverance of its amazing staff. They deserve our thanks, but they also need our support. The Royal College of Midwives has said that maternity services are experiencing a shortage of 2,000 midwives. In a 2020 survey, seven out of 10 midwives said that they were considering leaving the profession. The pandemic has put huge amounts of pressure on NHS staff, and it is vital that midwifery benefits from the Government’s £36 billion package of support for the health and social care system. It is also important that bereaved parents can get specific support and better access to counselling. The Baby Loss Awareness Week alliance carried out a 2019 survey, revealing that 60% of parents who have experienced baby loss said that they needed specialist psychological support but could not get it with the NHS. We need to improve access to counselling and invest more in prenatal nurses, giving them the right training to help parents who experience baby loss. If we are going to meet the Government’s national maternity safety ambition to see baby deaths fall by 50% by 2025, then action is clearly needed.

[Olivia Blake]

I thank the hon. Member for highlighting counselling, which is such an important issue. Does he accept that the quadrupled risk of suicide among people who experience miscarriage should be taken into consideration in suicide prevention work?

[Robert Largan]

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for her intervention, and I absolutely take that point. That definitely needs to be taken fully into consideration.

The House has been grappling with lots of lots of big, difficult issues these past months. We often have heated debates, and I am sure that we will have many more, for the foreseeable future. But there are times, like this, when parliamentarians can come together to try to find solutions to our shared challenges. Let us work together to help those who are going through the darkest of times and give them hope that things will get better.

Covid-19 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend asks a really important question around vaccination status. I can certainly say to him that that will not be used in any way. The whole purpose of this is to accept the clinical advice and to protect children. It was remiss of me, in response to an earlier question, not to say that the CMOs looked very specifically at the mental health and other implications for the child, not for the rest of society.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

Is the Minister concerned that some children’s hospitals are seeing winter levels of respiratory syncytial virus, another virus that affects young children? What will he do to ensure that those who are clinically extremely vulnerable are continually monitored so that they can access the flu vaccine and the covid vaccine in a timely manner without overlap?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is a matter that we spend a lot of time on, and I know that the NHS and school-age vaccination programmes have been working hard on it. We have operationalised flu vaccination, but the other vaccines, as the hon. Lady quite rightly reminds the House, are equally important for children’s health.

Reducing Baby Loss

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) on securing this timely and important debate, and on continuing to campaign on these issues. Her bravery in sharing her story is inspiring, and the work of the APPG should be commended. I agree with all her final points wholeheartedly. I was contacted by a number of constituents before today’s debate, and hundreds of people over the past year have shared harrowing stories of their own experiences of baby loss and miscarriage. I would like to thank all those who are campaigning for change.

The overwhelming feeling from all of those I have spoken to is that baby loss, like many other women’s health issues, still does not receive the attention, research or funding it deserves and so desperately needs. As a result, not nearly enough progress is being made. As the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth mentioned, every day in the UK, around 14 babies die before, during or soon after birth. An estimated one in four pregnancies end in loss during pregnancy or birth. These statistics are difficult to read, but what is much, much worse is the fact that many of these deaths are preventable. According to the recent report by the Health and Social Care Committee, 1,000 more babies a year would survive in England’s maternity services if those services were as safe Sweden’s.

While it is good to hear about improvements that have been made, my constituents and those who have experienced baby loss or miscarriage are more concerned about what more needs to be done to reduce the numbers experiencing loss, especially when the Committee’s report has shown that we are far from meeting our 2025 ambitions. Services are seriously overstretched, underfunded and understaffed, and huge health inequalities in perinatal outcomes remain unaddressed. If we are to buck this trend, the Government need to take the opportunity to reset and refocus perinatal services across England on meaningful and long-lasting transformation.

To begin this transformation and to ensure it results in meaningful change for all women, we need immediately to introduce enhanced data collection and sharing of all adverse perinatal outcomes. During my Adjournment debate earlier this year on the findings of The Lancet series, “Miscarriage matters”, the Minister committed to include the report’s recommendation to record every miscarriage in England in the Government’s women’s health strategy. This is a huge win for campaigners and a really welcome step, which I hope will come to fruition very soon.

However, we must ensure that there is consistent data collection on all adverse perinatal outcomes, including brain injury, and on loss during pregnancy before 24 weeks’ gestation. We must also ensure that all perinatal deaths are recorded within a 24-hour period, rather than the seven-day period that we currently have, to allow for more accurate and timely data collection.

Finally, and most importantly, we must ensure that data are consistently collected on ethnicity and social factors in pregnancy and the post-natal period, so that we can identify groups whose outcomes are worse than the average and set more robust targets. We know from the available data that stillbirth rates for black and black British babies are twice as high than those for white babies, and that the rates for Asian and Asian British babies are 1.6 times higher than those for white babies. Stillbirth rates for babies from the most deprived families are 1.7 times higher than those for the least deprived.

It is deeply upsetting that we still have no evidence-based interventions to reduce the risks that black, Asian and socioeconomically disadvantaged women face. I think we can all agree that we need a strategy in place to end the disparity in maternal and neonatal outcomes, but without available data on specific targets, we do not stand a hope of reducing the inequalities. Consistent data must be recorded and made accessible, so that collectively we can sound the alarm and set specific, tailored targets and strategies for meeting them. Although I welcome the forthcoming confidential inquiry into the deaths of black and black British babies, I am disappointed that Ministers feel unable to fund a similar inquiry into the deaths of Asian and Asian British babies, and I call on the Minister to look at that again.

For too long, baby loss has not received the focus it deserves, and it is dismissed all too often as an inevitability. Only by properly tracking baby loss will we be able to break the taboo, properly address the inequalities in health outcomes, and ensure that we have a foolproof strategy to reach our 2025 ambitions and improve outcomes. For those going through baby loss or still living with the trauma of prior experiences, progress cannot come soon enough.

Health and Care Bill

Olivia Blake Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I previously had a role within the NHS, and I have family members who work in the NHS, of whom I am very proud.

Nine years ago the Conservative party passed the Lansley reforms, and for nine years the NHS has suffered the consequences of that disaster. We have seen creeping privatisation, fragmentation of services and a lack of adequate funding. For patients that has meant disjointed care and soaring waiting lists, made worse by covid. For healthcare professionals, it has meant the NHS is no longer a hospitable place to work.

Before the pandemic, the national health service had a vacancy rate of 8%, which is 100,000 vacancies. I know from discussions with a variety of professional bodies and unions that there are significant skill shortages that will only get worse. Last year, a survey by the BMA found that 45% of doctors across the UK experience depression, anxiety, stress, burnout and other mental health conditions. How is it right that our NHS professionals are so over-represented among those experiencing mental health problems?

The Royal College of Nursing has found that 36% of nurses are thinking of leaving the profession, and YouGov reports that a quarter of NHS workers are more likely to quit their job than they were a year ago, due to low pay and understaffing. While Ministers have clapped for carers on their doorsteps, many of my constituents who have worked in the NHS rightly say that they do not want platitudes. They want to be heard. They want a proper pay rise and an end to top-down reforms that do nothing to address the real needs and their real concerns.

For them, this Bill is more of the same, but it is also an indictment of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It is the Government admitting that they have failed. Rather than learning the lessons, they have doubled down on the failures. There is nothing on waiting lists, nothing on vacancies and, despite the Prime Minister’s promise of a plan for social care, nothing on fixing the system that the pandemic has shown is not fit for purpose.

Rather than reinstating the duty on the Secretary of State to provide a comprehensive health service, reversing the privatisation of the NHS or reinstating the NHS as the default provider, the Bill allows private providers to sit on the boards that decide how NHS money is spent. It is astounding, but not surprising. After nine years of failure and after a year of handing millions of pounds to Tory cronies for useless PPE and a failed privatised test, trace and track system, the Government are now proposing to increase the influence of private companies in the health service. Unfortunately, on all these issues the Bill has nothing good to say, and even worse, it says all the wrong things.

Miscarriage Research: The Lancet

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I would like to thank Mr Speaker, through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing parliamentary time on this important topic in this Adjournment debate on miscarriage. I wanted to bring to the Chamber’s attention the recent series of papers published in The Lancet entitled “Miscarriage matters” and the petition by Tommy’s on support for women after miscarriages. The petition currently has over 170,000 signatories.

I know that this topic is often one that is difficult to talk about, but I hope that by giving the Chamber an opportunity to hear some of the experiences and latest research, this debate can act as a catalyst for change for miscarriage services in the upcoming women’s health strategy. For too long, miscarriage has been a taboo, and I was disappointed that while the press release on the women’s health strategy call for evidence mentioned breaking taboos, it did not mention miscarriages directly—only pregnancy-related issues.

I am so pleased that prominent women, like Meghan Markle and Myleene Klass, have been brave enough to speak and break the taboo about their experiences. Miscarriage is little spoken about but incredibly common. One in four pregnancies is thought to end in miscarriage. The research suggests that 15% of recognised pregnancies around the world end in miscarriage—that is 23 million a year or 44 miscarriages a minute. Black mothers face a 40% higher relative risk than white mothers and the risk of miscarriages is lowest between the ages of 20 and 29, but goes up threefold by 40 and fivefold by 45. Unfortunately, I think that this commonality and the well-known challenges in women’s health have meant that services are not always set up in the best interests of women. Miscarriages are often a symptom of an underlying health condition. They should not just be seen as a fact of life, and I am concerned that this attitude speaks to wider gendered inequalities in our society.

I shared my own experience in a Westminster Hall debate last year and I have been overwhelmed by families contacting me to share their experiences. I have heard from women who have never told anyone but their partners that they have experienced a miscarriage and women who have experienced this 30 years ago still carrying the hurt, and now, some are seeing their children going through exactly the same issues. Although I spoke of my loss to highlight the impact of the pandemic, what is clear to me is that, covid or not, there are some huge holes—sometimes voids—in the care provided. Some people are lucky enough to have access to fantastic services and early pregnancy units. Others attend their GPs and others end up at A&E. Unfortunately, some attitudes seem to be very, very prevalent both in society and in some health services.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I just say how moved I was—the hon. Lady knows this—by her contribution in Westminster Hall on that day? It moved me to tears. I congratulate her on securing this debate. We should change the way we handle support for miscarriages as a result of that debate. Does she not agree that the threshold of three miscarriages in a row for NHS investigation must change, as every miscarriage is devastating and the estimation of an acceptable level of loss is abhorrent?

[Olivia Blake]

I absolutely agree and I will come on to the issue of how care is provided later in the debate.

There seems to be a general lack of understanding that while miscarriage is common it is also incredibly traumatic and can lead to mental health problems. The Lancet research series highlights that anxiety, depression and even suicide are strongly associated with going through a miscarriage. Partners are also likely to be affected and previous reports have highlighted links with post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite that, the loss associated with miscarriage can often be minimised with phrases such as, “It’s okay, you can just try again,” or “It just wasn’t meant to be this time.” After my miscarriage, I got into a cycle of blaming myself and obsessing over what went wrong—if I ate the wrong thing, lifted something too heavy and so many other ridiculous thoughts. I have had to have counselling to deal with my trauma, but it was not offered. It was something that I had to seek out myself.

The same cycle has been described back to me again and again and again by people who have experienced miscarriages. My brave constituent Lauren, who has allowed me to share her story today, has sadly suffered three miscarriages. She has never ever been offered any mental health support through the miscarriage pathway. In fact, even after she requested it, her miscarriages were not even recorded on her medical notes, leaving her to explain to five different healthcare professionals about her three miscarriages. On one occasion, a member of staff asked her when she had had her first child. That is clearly incredibly distressing, and why I support calls for better data collection and patient recording of miscarriages.

Women have also told me about suffering three, four and five miscarriages. The reasons found for them were underlying health conditions, such as blood clotting disorders, autoimmune diseases and thyroid disease. Since my miscarriage, I ended up in hospital again and was diagnosed with diabetes, an issue that may have been picked up if testing had been carried out at the time of my miscarriage. The information I have received since my diagnosis of diabetes about pregnancy has been very informative and helpful, and a really stark contrast to those who have to get information about miscarriage.

There are some excellent examples and many, many committed staff who often share the frustrations about the system, which has a hard cut-off of 24 weeks for some support services. We have seen a huge number of organisations stepping forward to fill the gaps in support and advice: Tommy’s, Sands, the Miscarriage Association and, locally in Sheffield, the Sheffield Maternity Cooperative. I spoke with Phoebe from the Cooperative, an experienced midwife who herself has gone through a miscarriage. She works with individuals and families across the city to provide timely, appropriate and sensitive care, after her own experiences were, unfortunately, the exact opposite of that.

So what shall we do? I hope today the Minister will respond to the key findings of The Lancet series and to these key asks. The first is that the three-miscarriages rule has to end. The large number of people who signed the Tommy’s petition shows the strength of feeling on that. We would not expect someone to go through three heart attacks before we tried to find out what was wrong and treat them, so why do we expect women to go through three—in some cases preventable—losses before they are offered the answers and treatments they need? Instead, the research recommends a graded support system where people get information and support after their first miscarriage—we should not phrase it like that, though—tests after the second, and consultant-led care after the third.



The second key ask is 24/7 care and support being available. That care should be standardised to avoid a postcode lottery or the patchy provision currently available, and it should include follow-up mental health support to help to reduce mental illness post miscarriage.

Finally, we need to acknowledge that miscarriage matters and start collecting data on miscarriage, stillbirth and pre-term rates. I was shocked to find that no central data existed on the statistics and these estimates are based on very many different sources. We must break the taboo on miscarriage. I know from personal experience, and from many people who have contacted me, that we could do so, so much better. Will the Minister today commit to take forward these proposals and take a stand for women, individuals and families the system is failing? And will she meet me and campaigners to discuss this issue further?

Obesity Strategy 2020

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

Like almost everyone speaking in the debate today, I support measures to ensure that people have a healthy relationship with the food that they eat. However, healthy eating habits cannot simply be measured on weighing scales or counted in calories. Today, we are facing a mental health crisis, one element of which is the rising epidemic of eating disorders, including obesity.

I fear that our strategy falls well short of the social and mental health support needed to help people manage a healthy relationship with food. I am talking about those who have any conditions relating to weight management, whether that is diabetes or heart disease, or an eating disorder. I hope that the new funding for services will see those approaches supported.

While I am fully supportive of interventions such as restrictions on advertising and work to improve the diet of the nation, I remain very concerned about certain aspects of the strategy. Before the pandemic, hospital admissions were increasing, especially among teenagers. In 2019-20, we saw a sharp 32% increase on the previous year to more than 21,000 cases, nearly 5,000 of which were children. In addition to hospital admissions between February 2020 and January 2021, the eating disorder charity Beat reported a massive 173% surge in demand for its services. During that time, we saw no corresponding rise in the levels of funding going to eating disorder services. I have sat with eating disorder specialists who have told me that the money that is available often fails to get to the frontline. One doctor I spoke to said that his service was originally designed for 60 children, but now serves 280, with inadequate funding for those places.

I know that NHS trusts are also struggling with non-specialist in-patient services for children. The rising demand means that they just do not have the expertise available to treat in-patients with eating disorders properly, with many waiting for urgent beds for children in crisis in any specialist unit anywhere in the country. We still see a situation in adult services where there are no waiting time targets for support for eating disorders.

I am highlighting this dire situation because one measure of the Government’s obesity strategy involves calorie labelling on menus. Among those who will be reading those menus will be people with eating disorders. There is a wealth of research that shows that calorie labelling can exacerbate unhealthy relationships with food and can be a predictor of the onset of eating disorders. In trying to fix one problem, there is a real danger that Ministers will make another far worse, the costs of which are not trivial. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental health problem, and people who suffer from them are at increased risk of suicide and self-harm. While it is true that half of those with eating disorders recover, 20% remain in a chronic condition.

We should look at obesity in the round. Balanced nutritious meals, promoting healthy diets such as Mediterranean diets, and healthy levels of exercise are far more important ways of maintaining a healthy weight. I urge the Government to rethink and revisit that aspect of the plan, come up with a solution that balances the needs of all. If we really want to promote healthy eating habits, calories on menus are not necessarily the way to do it for the whole population and risk making a very bad situation even worse for those suffering from or at risk of developing eating disorders. I say this as someone with type 2 diabetes. I have lost weight in order to manage my diabetes. There is a real issue with anxiety around calories and weighing out food. More needs to be done to recognise these anxieties and mental health issues.

NHS Pay

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) on securing this debate and on standing up for the millions of NHS workers who have put their lives on the line during the covid crisis.

NHS workers need a pay rise not just because they have worked hard for the last year, but because they have had repeated real-terms pay cuts for the past 10 years. The pandemic has shone a light on the fact that for more than a decade, we have failed to value the work done by people in the NHS and care sectors. That has had real consequences.

We have all read the stories about empty Nightingale hospitals. Some of those hospitals were never used because we did not have the workers to staff them. It was a misunderstanding of the long-term crisis in recruitment and retention in the NHS—a crisis with no mystery, as successive pay freezes have had serious consequences on our ability to recruit to the NHS.

For example, pay rates for nurses in the UK are extremely uncompetitive internationally. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have heard evidence that Australian nurses are paid double the amount paid to those in the UK and that those in the US are paid one third more. Experts have even warned of a brain drain abroad. That is disgraceful when the cost of giving our NHS workers a pay rise is so low.

Based on the Treasury’s own figures, London Economics calculated that the net cost of the RCN’s proposal of a 12.5% pay rise is only £0.82 billion. Given that £37 billion has been found to fund Test and Trace for two years, when the annual NHS wage bill has been estimated to be £34 billion, questions should rightly be asked about what can and cannot be afforded.

Instead of investing in staff, the Government’s offer of 1% is only enough to buy NHS workers an extra cup of coffee a week. That is not valuing the work they do, and it does not make up for a decade of pay stagnation. It is no wonder that there are tens of thousands of nursing and other vacancies in the NHS. Instead of investing billions into underwriting profits for private companies, Ministers should be investing in our NHS and the workers who keep it running. The pandemic has shown us what happens when we do not do that.

It is time to end pay stagnation, to back the calls from the RCN, Unison, my own union the GMB and campaigns such as “NHS workers say no to public sector pay inequality”, and to give our NHS workers the pay rise they deserve, which can be achieved with the right goals.

Covid-19: Effect on People with Learning Disabilities

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for securing this important debate, which is well overdue.

I have had many messages from people who have been worried about changes to services during this crisis and about the impact that the crisis has had on their day-to-day living, with many describing it as devastating. I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and last week we heard from care home witnesses that those with learning disabilities were

“very much ignored at the start of the pandemic.”

We were discussing the provision of personal protective equipment in care settings, but it is fair to say that many people feel that way about the whole pandemic.

Too often, people with learning disabilities have been an afterthought throughout this public health crisis. That is entirely the wrong approach because we know that the health outcomes for those with learning disabilities are poor. While more research into the impact of covid-19 is needed, what we know so far is damning. As has been pointed out, those with learning disabilities have a death rate that is 4.1 times higher than that of the general population, and 30 times higher than for those aged 18 to 34. Access to easy-read information was also raised with me, as were concerns about good public health messaging.

As if those figures were not worrying enough, many disability rights campaigners, including myself, were alarmed at the NICE guidelines for intensive care unit referrals, which seemed to actively discriminate against admitting people with learning disabilities into intensive care or life-saving treatment. I am glad that NICE has updated the guidance, but the episode shines a light on the way people with learning disabilities have been treated throughout, and perhaps before, this crisis.

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on special educational needs and disabilities, I have heard first-hand testimony about the huge amount of added pressure on young people and their families throughout the crisis, including the difficulties accessing education online, which my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester described; access to hydrotherapy disappearing; other therapeutic interventions being withdrawn from schools; and a host of other issues. We will be publishing our report and recommendations early next year, which obviously go broader than learning disabilities. It is clear that, after years of being a Cinderella service, provision for children and young people with learning disabilities is already very stretched. We are badly positioned to support some of the most vulnerable people through this crisis, and that needs to improve.

I am also concerned about the delay in the publication of the SEND review. That is worrying as there is urgent work to be done in that area. The people most affected by covid—those with learning disabilities—should be at the forefront of the Government’s planning and at the forefront of their minds. Time and time again, the people with such needs, who are most affected by the covid outbreak, are given the least thought. That needs to change. While there has been progress with the roll-out of vaccines, people with learning disabilities should rightly be given priority. I see they are on the priority list, but not that high.

Let us end the Cinderella services in education, health and social care, and learn the hard lessons. We have seen some abject failures in that area in recent history. Let us learn from this pandemic, so that people with learning disabilities no longer have to wait to be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Let us also ensure that all our healthcare professionals are adequately trained in this area, so that no one need fear entering health services at the moment.

Baby Loss: Covid-19

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I would just like to say a huge thank you to the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) and to every Member who has spoken about their experience today. It is really important that we are having this debate on the effect of covid on services.

This debate is very difficult for me. I had not planned to talk about my experience today, because the experience of many of my constituents and the stories from up and down the country show that lessons desperately need to be learned and more support is needed for how we care for people through the covid crisis. However, after hearing the contributions from other hon. Members, I feel that it is only fair that I share my story.

My thoughts go out to all those families who are facing bereavement and baby loss and miscarriage at this time. I want to focus, particularly, on partners being able to attend appointments, emergency and otherwise, and on mental health and redeployment of key staff. We need to recognise that this is not just a short-term challenge and we could be seeing many more months of disruption as a result of covid-19.

As we know, as many as one in four pregnancies will end in miscarriage and 14 stillbirths happen every day. I first raised the issues of maternity services back in June, because I heard concerns from my constituents about them. Little did I know that I would experience a miscarriage in August and would have to go through some of the issues that my constituents had raised with me—going to A&E and my partner having to wait in the car park; getting confused and muddled about my dates; being unable to have a hug or someone to hold my hand or support me on hearing the news that I was having a miscarriage.

It was a very difficult situation and one that I want no one else to have to go through. No one should have to hear that news on their own.

[Sarah Owen]

We would all like to express our thanks to my hon. Friend for her bravery in sharing her personal experience, especially as it is so recent and clearly so raw, and also because it is an experience that her constituents have written about. You are doing a fantastic job representing them here today.

[Olivia Blake]

Thank you. I can’t see because my glasses have steamed up because of my tears.

Receiving bad news alone is incredibly traumatic and challenging. Having to then go and repeat that news to your partner in a car park is another level of difficult, at a point when you are struggling to process the information. It is impossible to take in everything that has been raised or to answer any of your partner’s questions when you get into the car. No one should be put in that position, but too many people have been.

While I welcome the Government’s change of advice and guidance on allowing partners to attend scans and appointments, it is currently not enough to improve access. I urge the Minister to do more and not assume that the job is done on this issue. Unfortunately, when I talk to my local services about my own experience and that of others, they say that they are still unable to operate in a way that is safe to allow partners. I know partners have been forced to wait outside, not knowing what is happening on the other side of those walls, unable to attend and support their loved ones, including those who have already experienced the loss of a baby. They have been unable to discuss options and many have been left alone for long periods after receiving devastating news, as staff are unable to comfort them, other than to offer a tissue.

My constituent has started a petition campaigning for access to neonatal and specialist units, to ensure that all parents with a baby are able to visit their child if they are receiving extra care. It is clear that that depends on postcodes. Simple steps, such as testing both parents to allow them to visit when their child has to stay in hospital and receive treatment, could easily fix that situation. I call for more medium-term answers to be provided, and an increase in investment and space for more covid-secure provision, whether on a regional footprint or in the community within every trust. It should not be down to postcode. Everyone going through this should have the right to be treated with compassion and dignity.

That compassion should extend to providing even more support, in terms of bereavement counselling, at this time. The support that parents or siblings would usually provide is also very difficult. I have not been able to hug my mum since August and it is very hard. We know that space for memory making has also been squeezed. I urge that such spaces be protected, as they are key to the grieving and healing process.

I want to focus on the redeployment of staff in these areas. I pay tribute to all the NHS and local authority staff who are working incredibly hard, under extremely difficult circumstances. However, I question the decision to redeploy health visitors and midwives, who play a key role in helping to detect issues. The redeployment of such staff does not accept the reality that pregnancy, and complications in pregnancy, will continue. They are not elective services and will not stop during a pandemic.

We have seen caseloads massively jump up, in some cases to hundreds more than usual, as staff are left in services and are unable to give their normal professional standards and time to each family. Harrowing reports were covered by BBC Radio 4’s “Woman’s Hour” earlier in the year on the experience of mothers and the workforce. That was one of the biggest issues raised. I hope the Minister will ensure that the situation is not repeated in the current spike or future spikes, and will be able to make the case to the Department that these are vital key services, for which there is no pause or stop button.

Finally, I hope we can all agree that this issue needs more action, and that support for our constituents must be prioritised. We cannot face going back to a situation with partners waiting in car parks and we need to fix the postcode lottery on that.