Baby Loss Awareness Week

Debate between Stephen Gethins and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ms Nadine Dorries)]

What an important debate this has been, and that is of course thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who has been sitting next to me throughout the debate. In fact, I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury still chairs the APPG on baby loss. This is the fourth year that the House has had this debate, and I hope that my hon. Friends continue to push for it to be held every year, forever. It is such an important time not only to focus on the areas that people feel we should be concentrating on, but also to focus on the achievements and to hear stories from so many people.

In the 10 minutes that I have, I would like to respond to some of the points made. I begin with my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), the former Secretary of State, who, in his usual modest way, omitted to mention the incredible contribution he has made in this area. He spoke passionately about changing from a culture of blame to one of learning; he brought that about in the NHS through his own efforts when, while in the Department of Health and Social Care, he introduced the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch. He instructed it to undertake, I believe, 1,000 maternity investigations a year, including into stillbirths and other mortality issues.

My right hon. Friend asked how we will share lessons learned between trusts and improve patient safety. HSIB has established a process for doing that. The perinatal mortality review annual report will be published on Thursday, as I think he may know. The HSIB annual report will be published in due course. Both reports will begin to share some of the learning from more than 1,500 cases. We are doing more to share information when things go wrong, and as a result of the former Secretary of State’s initiative, when something goes wrong in one trust, we will ensure that it does not go wrong in another. We all hope that will be the outcome of HSIB. We cannot thank him enough, and I am sure we will be mentioning his efforts for many years to come.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke powerfully about her loss. One of the themes of the debate has been mental health and the support that those who have lost a baby, including fathers and others in the family, need at a time of loss. She moved me to tears. She spoke about testing for pre-eclampsia. In April, NHS England announced that it will make the placental growth factor blood test available across the country, in the light of evidence that the test speeds up the diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. I urge her to push for parity in Scotland, so that the same test given to mothers in England is made available to mothers in Scotland. I am sure that other Members will call for that in this place. I know that other Members in this House have suffered loss through pre-eclampsia. It is a dreadful condition. Our objective should be to do all we can to ensure that no mother has to go through that.

[Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)]

The Minister makes a very good point. I pay enormous tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who has done phenomenal work in bringing her experiences to the Chamber. I thank the Minister for her remarks. We may not always see eye to eye, but on this issue, it would be great if her Department and the Scottish Government worked closely together.

[Ms Dorries]

I have already sent a message to my team asking why the test is not being done in Scotland and what we can do to ensure that it is rolled out across the UK. If I can have those conversations with the devolved Administration, I certainly will, and I will certainly push that from my end and in my Department.

Renegotiation of EU Membership (Devolved Administrations)

Debate between Stephen Gethins and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Can I make the point that no Member in the Chamber or in Westminster Hall is referred to as “you”? Thank you.

[Stephen Gethins]

Thank you. My apologies, Ms Dorries.

The Scottish Government set out renegotiation priorities in their agenda for EU reform, which I make Members aware of once again. I also refer Members to a speech made in June 2015 by Scotland’s First Minister, in which she looked at areas such as more local decision making on health, for example. The fact that the Scottish Government were not able to act on minimum pricing for alcohol was a disgrace: the democratically elected Scottish Government saw it as a particular priority to tackle a particular Scottish public health issue. The First Minister also looked at a single market in energy and digital services—especially our renewables industry, which has taken such a battering recently—and more local discretion in implementing regulation.

As part of our renegotiation, we need to look at how the devolved Administrations work and co-operate with member states. A few years ago, under the previous Labour Administration, a memo was leaked that showed devolved Ministers were not having an impact. In fact, one of them was being sent to the salle d’écoute—for Members whose French is not quite up to scratch, that is the listening room—which is no place for a Minister who oversaw areas such as agriculture and fisheries. Europe matters to the devolved Administrations. It matters in Northern Ireland, as we have heard, given the long land border and the ramifications for the Good Friday agreement and the common travel area. In Wales, up to 200,000 jobs are said to depend on EU membership.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

As a result of the Division, this debate will now continue until 17.40. Four people have applied to speak after Mr Gethins has finished, so I am going to impose a voluntary time limit of five minutes per speech. If people adhere to that, the Minister and Mr Gethins will have adequate time to respond, but, of course, that is entirely up to you.

[Stephen Gethins]

Thank you, Ms Dorries. Before we went into the Division, I was talking about areas that the Scottish Government have identified where there could be reform, and a lot of that focused on areas for reform where powers could come back. I will come back to this point later, but if there are powers to come back, and if those powers directly relate to the responsibilities of the devolved Administrations, I hope that they will not be devolved back from Brussels just to reside in London and that there will be further devolution to reflect that.

On renegotiation, we often talk about less Europe, but maybe we should sometimes talk about more Europe. The Scottish Government have gone further than elsewhere in the United Kingdom on areas such as climate change or our energy union, where maybe we should be looking at more powers. We could also be looking at more powers in areas of security policy. No one country can possibly deal with the refugee crisis on its own, and the Scottish Government have already set out their willingness to work with European partners and the UK Government to take more refugees.

Let me recap why Europe matters for the devolved Administrations. There are big issues that affect us all in areas such as agriculture policy, fisheries, energy, investment and transport—devolved areas where the EU has a big role and the devolved Administrations have direct responsibility. I have mentioned Northern Ireland. In Wales, up to 200,000 jobs are said to be dependent on EU membership. Even the Isle of Man has a relationship with the EU through the UK as set out in protocol 3 to the UK’s Act of Accession. That is worth bearing in mind.

Key areas for Scotland are set out above, but we often hear about sovereignty. I will read a quote from Professor Douglas-Scott of the university of Oxford and would like the Minister to bear it in mind:

“A UK exit from the EU does not save UK sovereignty. The Claim of Right for Scotland 1989 entrenched the fundamental principle that ‘the people are sovereign’ and that the people have ‘the sovereign right to self-determination and to choose freely the form in which their state is to be constituted’.”

Professor Douglas-Scott’s argument is that

“Therefore, any UK exit of the EU against Scotland’s wishes will create a constitutional crisis rather than save the UK’s sovereignty.”

I leave that with the House to consider.

The hon. Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), who has not been able to return from the vote yet, referred to the referendum. We were a little disappointed with the European Union Referendum Bill. We wanted to see whether there would be a referendum and we obviously voted against that—that was in our manifesto—but if there is to be a referendum, we want EU citizens and 16 and 17-year-olds to be engaged.

In Dublin yesterday, Fiona Hyslop highlighted the fact that 173,000 EU nationals make their home in Scotland. They made an invaluable contribution to the Scottish independence referendum and make an invaluable contribution to Scotland’s day-to-day life. We want them also to be involved. We want a positive campaign that puts forward a positive vision for Scotland. That is why I was a little concerned about some of the language from the Minister’s Back Benchers on some of these issues.

As we have heard from other hon. Members, Scotland and the other devolved Administrations reap the economic benefits of membership in exports, jobs and so on, but those benefits are not just economic. As Fiona Hyslop said in Dublin last night, solidarity, social protection and mutual support must underpin a modern Europe and we want Scotland to be a part of a progressive European Union with European citizens—despite what we said in the referendum last year, we are all still European citizens—at the heart of decision making. The Scottish Government are committed to making the positive case for reform and I have set that out a little.

I do not want to take up too much time because I know that other hon. Members want to come in, but I want to pose some questions for the Minister to answer in his response. Will he set out the formal role for devolved Administrations in the renegotiations—the formal role; I am not talking about an ad hoc role over the phone? We want to hear about a formal role in the same way as the Prime Minister said today that there should be a formal role for other capitals.

Will the Minister comment on the Scottish Government’s priorities in Scotland’s agenda for EU reform? In future, will devolved Administrations be consulted as a matter of course on decisions that affect them and are made at EU level if we remain part of it? This is not just about changing the EU’s relationship, but perhaps about changing the way we, as a member state, interact. I would like a much more formal role for the devolved Administrations.

In the past, we have seen civil servants or Ministers with no direct responsibility for an issue, such as the Minister for bees, leading fisheries negotiations when the Scottish Minister was present. Will the Minister look again at where Ministers from the devolved Administrations can take a lead, with particular reference to fisheries and agriculture?