Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), whom I am proud to call my friend. The work we have done together on the all-party group on baby loss is an exemplar of cross-party working at its best.

I welcome this Bill, presented by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and support all four parts of it wholeheartedly. However, this morning I will speak about just two, one which I will discuss briefly and another which is of great personal significance to me. First, I welcome the measures in this Bill that would legislate to equalise civil partnerships and open them up to heterosexual couples. As we all have, I have had many constituents contact me about that in recent weeks, and I am happy to support the measures the hon. Gentleman proposes.

Now I come to the main topic I wish to talk about this morning. I remember, when the hon. Gentleman sent an email around notifying us all of his intentions with this Bill, being really hopeful when I saw the provision to register stillbirths who are born under 24 weeks’ gestation. I hope the hon. Gentleman does not mind my quoting his email, in which he said:

“Currently a child born to a mother who goes through the whole process of labour but is stillborn after 23 weeks for example, is treated no differently to a miscarriage…Both are traumatic and we need to do more to support families affected in this way but the failure by the state to acknowledge that a child born this way ever existed effectively surely just adds insult to injury.”

When I received that email and read that paragraph, initially it floored me, because it was me he was describing. That was exactly my experience with Lucy, my third child, and I am sure I used similar words to describe how it all felt in my intervention in the baby loss debate in 2016.

Lucy was born at 23 and a half weeks, and sadly she was stillborn. I mentioned Lucy for the first time in Parliament during the powerful baby loss debate during Baby Loss Awareness Week in 2016. That was 11 years after I had been elected. I said at the time how much I admired—and I still do—my fellow officers of the all-party group on baby loss, who led the debate that day. The year before, the hon. Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) had spoken in detail about their loss in a groundbreaking Adjournment debate, which I watched from the safety of my office because I was too scared to be in the Chamber because I knew how emotional I would get listening in the Chamber. The fact that they were on their feet talking about it just astounded me, because I had never felt brave enough or strong enough to do what they did. I still find it very difficult, even now, all these years later, to talk about it.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I thank my friend, the hon. Lady, for giving way. She is making a very brave and powerful speech. I would like to put on the record my huge thanks and appreciation for all her work in the setting up of the all-party group, and for the group’s continuing work. Bereaved parents, all of us, want to ensure that our child’s life, however short, has meaning. The hon. Lady is absolutely doing that and, if she does not mind me saying so, I think Lucy would be very proud of her mummy today.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman was trying to calm me down, but he has probably made me worse! As Members can all see, I feel very strongly about this issue, so I felt that, even though I knew I would end up in floods of tears, I had to come along and take part in this debate and express how strongly I want to support this legislative change, and why.

If Lucy had been born alive at 23 and a half weeks, she would have been incubated immediately and rushed in the waiting ambulance, with flashing blue lights, to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where they have the regional centre of excellence for special care baby units for very premature babies. She would have had the very best world-class care. She would have had a birth certificate and she would have been celebrating her 20th birthday this year. But sadly she was stillborn, so there were no flashing blue lights, no incubator and no birthday parties, ever. And as I found out to my horror, there was no birth or death certificate. As I held her in my arms and had to come to terms with what had just happened, I also had to come to terms with the fact that, officially, she did not exist, and that I would not be getting any certificate of her arrival or death. She was three to four days short of the required 24-week legal age.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is very clear that Lucy does exist. Lucy does exist in my hon. Friend’s memories. It is very important for so many constituents that the all-party group on baby loss and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) are raising this issue today. My hon. Friend is very brave to be able to talk through her personal experience. As ever with the many issues that we cover in debates these days, it is important for people outside the House to understand that MPs share these experiences, as we share mental health issues and other forms of loss in our families. I congratulate my hon. Friend on her speech. The all-party group is doing a fantastic job of campaigning. I hope we can hear a little more from my hon. Friend because the issues she is covering are really valuable.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Thank you so much. I appreciate all the support that everyone is giving me to help me to get through this moment.

As I was saying, Lucy was three to four days short of the 24-week legal age required to be considered eligible for a death certificate. I was horrified and further traumatised when I then saw it entered in my records as a miscarriage. Because she was pre-24 weeks, she did not even get the dignity of being classed as a stillbirth, although that is what I always say she was, if and when I do talk about this tragedy—which is not very often, as Members can tell.

We went on to have a lovely blessing, given by the amazing hospital chaplain in the private room to which I was moved after she was born. We named her Lucy during the blessing and spent a number of hours with her before she was taken to the chapel of rest. Twenty years ago, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead did not have any cold cots—I sincerely hope it does now; I will try to find out—so we could not spend the night with her, even though I was kept in overnight, heavily sedated.

We had a very small family funeral service. My children were two and three and a half at the time, so they were not even there, just our parents. The service was organised by the chaplain and the Co-Op, which funded and organised everything. That was such a touching thing to do, although I know that is not always the case—my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) campaigns on that very topic, and I support her in that. Lucy was buried in a tiny white coffin in the same grave as my nana and granddad.

I tell the House all that to highlight that to the chaplain, to the Co-Op funeral service and to us, her family, she existed. She was a baby who sadly was born dead. Her heart was beating throughout my labour, up until just minutes before she was born. She just could not make the final push into this world. Because of that, and because of a matter of a few days, she does not officially exist in any records, other than in our memories and our family records. Even the entry on the deeds for the grave is my name, as if I, or in this case a bit of me, was buried there. Her name is not on the deed for the burial plot because although buried there, she did not exist. I hope that Members can appreciate and understand how hard this was to deal with and to understand at the time, when I was dealing with what was, and still is, the worst thing I have ever had to experience in all my life.

There must be a way to square the circle in cases such as this, with the whole 24-weeks viability argument. Babies born too soon and before 24 weeks now survive in much greater numbers than ever before. To my great delight, I have met some of them at events in Parliament and it is amazing—each one is a miracle. Surely there is a way to recognise the 22-week or 23-week babies who did not quite make it to their first breath. That is why I welcome wholeheartedly what the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is trying to do with this Bill. I hope that the Government will look favourably on it.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill (First sitting)

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 18th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

I would prefer to include the term “stillbirth” rather than “pregnancy loss”, but the term “stillbirth” cannot, as the law stands, be applied to births before the 24-week threshold. I urge hon. Members to support clause 3 and amendment 14.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I am happy to be able to respond on this issue again and support the private Member’s Bill promoted by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and his efforts to secure this change.

How we feel about the issue will be born out of our own lived experiences for those of us who have lived experiences of baby loss and, in this case, pre-24-weeks baby loss. Those who were present at Second Reading or who have followed the Bill’s progress will know what my lived experience is, as I relived it on the Floor of the House, with lots of tears along the way. That was a very painful experience for me, and I do not intend to relive it again today, for which I am sure everyone will be grateful. However, for the benefit of the Committee and those who may not know, I will just briefly say that I had a stillborn baby girl at 23 and a half weeks. We called her Lucy, and she would have been 20 years old on 19 May this year. We had a naming ceremony for her in a room in the hospital—it was not a bereavement suite, because this was 20 years ago—and that was because of the thoughtfulness of the hospital chaplain, who went on to arrange Lucy’s burial with the Co-op funeral service, which did not charge anything. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has campaigned for burial fees and funeral costs to be waived in such cases, and the Government have committed to that, which is great, so things do move on—things are getting better—and that is what we are hoping to see here today.

As some hon. Members will know from the Second Reading debate, Lucy was buried in the same grave as my nana and grandad. When we got the deeds back, that was the start of me realising that Lucy formally did not exist, because I was horrified to see that it was my name on the deeds for the burial plot. I realised that that was because, legally, Lucy did not exist; it was a bit of me that was in the plot. I still cannot quite come to terms with that. I hope that it does not confuse whoever is burying someone in that plot next; will they think, “Oh, is Sharon Hodgson in here?” Hopefully I will not be.

I am not sure whether what we are proposing with this Bill would change any of what I have described, but I hope that it would change the feeling that I had nothing other than Lucy’s grave and a couple of photos to prove that she had existed. Also, I do not think that the Bill would change the fact that she is recorded in my medical notes as a miscarriage. Even while I was holding her in my arms—she was a fully formed baby—she was classed as a miscarriage, because she had not taken a breath. If she had, she would have been rushed to the special care baby unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, and, because it is one of the best in the country, she probably would indeed have celebrated her 20th birthday earlier this year.

The Bill will not change the miscarriage-recording fact, because we are not discussing viability, as we know where that would lead, and none of us wants to go down that path or open up the abortion debate with this Bill. However, I hope that the Bill will ensure that sensitivity about language and the use of language when the worst happens— especially in the pre-24-weeks period, for all the reasons that I have explained—is improved.

On the subject of what we hope that the Bill will do, I note that the review that the Bill instigated and which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham spoke about is still under way and has not yet reported. I also share his concern that we have managed to take part in only one of the three sessions so far, so lots of debate would already have happened in the review without the hon. Gentleman or me attending.

I have read through the policy statement from the Miscarriage Association that it probably has submitted to the review, and evidence submitted by the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss. I am proud to be one of vice-chairs of that group. Both groups make the case that any registration or certificate given should be on a voluntary not mandatory basis. I refer to page 4 of the all-party group’s evidence to the review, which states that there were 2,586 respondents to the survey that the Miscarriage Association carried out, and 93% of those responded said they had had experience of pregnancy loss themselves.

It will become clear where I am going with this: the overwhelming majority—74%—were in favour of permitting voluntary registration for pre-24 week loss, miscarriage, ectopic or molar pregnancy at any gestation, and 23% said that they felt that that option should be for only a certain gestation, the cut-off points varying from four to 23 weeks. Just under half of the 23%— 11% of all respondents—suggested that that cut-off point should be 12 weeks. In summary, among the respondents there is overwhelming majority support for allowing registration for pre-24 week pregnancy loss. Some form of registration for pre-24 weeks is agreed, and it seems to be agreed from those respondents that it should be voluntary.

The hon. Gentleman’s constituent, Hayley, who first approached him about the issue with her twins, feels that it should not be a matter of voluntary or mandatory—I agree, because I do not like “mandatory”; I prefer “automatic”—for late-term miscarriage or very early stillbirths, whatever they are called. If it happened at over 24 weeks, it would not be, “You must have a death certificate”, it would just happen. I would not necessarily have liked to have been asked at that stage whether I wanted to have some sort of certificate of registration. It was bad enough that this awful trauma had just happened, without being asked to make a decision that I probably was not in a strong enough position to make. I understand that the Government say that people would have 42 days to make that decision, but I come back to it being automatic at a certain stage.

I have looked at the survey questions in detail—I am not an expert on surveys or questionnaires, although I am pulling apart my clinical commissioning group questionnaire at the moment—and I think it is a fair set of questions. But by the rules of mathematics, it will have been weighted to receive more responses from people who may have suffered, or are connected to someone who had had, a miscarriage from conception to pre-20 weeks, rather than those from 20 weeks to pre-24 weeks. Among the 2,586 people, the latter group will have been smaller than the nought to 20 weeks group. Of the survey respondents, 93% had suffered a pregnancy loss, but I do not think they were asked when that pregnancy loss was. I hazard that if a further survey were done that separated those two groups we might be able to see a difference in the answers. That is something the review should do when it is trying to form an opinion about whether it should be automatic—I will not use the term “mandatory”, because people automatically get a birth certificate or a death certificate after 24 weeks—rather than voluntary.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I would like to start by thanking the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for introducing the Bill and for his excellent campaigning and commitment on all aspects of the Bill. It has been a genuine pleasure to work with him, particularly on the registration of very early stillborn babies, and I thank him for his earlier kind words. Following my speech on Second Reading in February, I was overwhelmed with messages of love and kindness from people up and down the country, and even from as far away as the Netherlands and Italy. I also received messages from families who, like me, had experienced the heartbreak of losing a baby pre-24 weeks and who had been distressed to find that they were unable to register their birth and death because the baby had been born a few days, or perhaps a week or so, before the 24-week gestation threshold. Their messages have inspired me to continue the campaign to change this, and I am pleased to be working on the Department of Health and Social Care’s advisory panel for the pregnancy loss review, which will make recommendations to the Secretary of State.

I also support the clause to give coroners the power to investigate the deaths of full-term stillborn babies. Along with the much-improved additional support that now exists due to the very successful national bereavement care pathways—for which the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss successfully lobbied—it will give solace to parents, at the most devastating time in their lives, to know the cause and circumstances that led to the death of their much-anticipated baby.

Moving on to the other elements in this Bill, I believe that it is way beyond time for a mother’s details to be included in marriage registration. We have an outdated system that prioritises fathers over mothers, and it must be brought into the 21st century. The mother’s details can be found on marriage certificates in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and in civil partnership certification. Believe it or not, I was married 28 years ago—[Hon. Members: “No!”] I know; it is unbelievable. The sad thing is that, after being brought up single-handedly by my mother after my father abandoned me and my brothers when we were little, it is my father’s name on my marriage certificate, not my mother’s. It is even more sad that, at the time, I did not even think to question that, so endemic was the patriarchy of officialdom to me as a young woman in 1990.

The fact that, almost three decades later, this antiquated patriarchal anomaly is at last to end shows how far we have come, and that women are not, and never were, chattels to be handed over from father to husband. This change will turn the marriage certificate into what it should be: a legal document, not a transfer certificate. It also never occurred to me that the ceremony may also be a little bit outdated. As my father was not present to “give me away”, I asked my uncle to step in—again believing that this had to be done by a man. I would now insist that it had to be done by my mam—I hope she is watching this; I can tell the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that that is who I was texting earlier, but he is not listening—if indeed I felt I needed to be given away by anyone. However, I am happily married, so that is bit of a moot point. I say that in case my husband is listening, so that he will know that I am not planning on doing it again.

That brings me to my final point on the clause to allow opposite-sex couples to enter a civil partnership. I was pleased when the Government announced earlier this month that they intended to do this, and I am pleased that the amendment calling on the Government to do it within the next six months has been added to the Bill. The clauses in the Bill will help to ensure more equality and fairness in all four of the very different areas that we are discussing. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, it is a unique Bill, and I am proud to have worked with and supported him in securing its passage through the House. I wish him and the Bill well and look forward to the day it receives Royal Assent.