Baby Loss

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

This Baby Loss Awareness Week, we honour those children who are loved and missed, and we recognise the parents, siblings, families and friends who carry their memories every day. Today, I want to emphasise just how vital it is that we see the quality of bereavement care standardised, and that this standard is mandated for every NHS trust and health board.

My constituents John and Holly Osman live in Wells with their two lively children, six-year-old twins named Alex and Amelia. It may surprise some of my constituents that I speak about John, as we do not share a political perspective. However, we share a life experience with each other, many of my constituents and, I understand, one in every two people in this country: the terrible loss of a pregnancy or the death of a baby. That experience transcends all political differences.

Some eight years ago, John and Holly lost their much loved twins, Logan and Lottie, five months into their pregnancy. Logan and Lottie’s lives were short. Logan was with them for 15 minutes and Lottie for 57 minutes. Holly, who is in the Gallery this evening, tells me that registering their births and deaths will remain one of the hardest things they have ever had to do.

John and Holly were lucky to receive excellent bereavement care from the team at the Royal United hospital at Bath, which in 2017 and 2018 was piloting the national bereavement care pathway. Being able to deliver in the forget me not suite, where they receive care from trained bereavement midwives and spent two days with their babies making memories, is something they say they probably did not realise how much they needed then, but that they cherish deeply now.

As Holly highlights, the power of compassionate, skilled bereavement care cannot be overstated. It helps parents begin to process trauma, to create memories and to honour a life, however short. That care does not erase loss, but it brings dignity, acknowledgement and a foundation for healing. The care that parents receive in those heartbreaking moments stays with them forever. No one can turn back the clock, but we can make a difference through having compassion, understanding and better care.

It shocked me that 50% of bereaved parents reported that they were able to access the support they needed, but only 17% were able to do so through the NHS. I pay tribute to the NHS clinicians, midwives and support staff who deliver that care with tenderness and professionalism. Good care helps parents and families begin to navigate the painful journey of bereavement. Whether those NHS staff who engage with the bereaved family during this journey have received specialist bereavement training depends on where that care is being provided.

Poor care can deepen trauma. We know that bereavement leaves parents vulnerable to increased risk of developing mental health conditions. That is why it is essential that every bereaved parent in the UK has access to standardised high-quality bereavement support, including clear signposting, timely referrals and specialist mental health care when it is needed most.

Excellent bereavement care should not be a matter of luck or postcode. The national bereavement care pathway has finally been adopted voluntarily by every hospital offering maternity care in England, with the last trust having adopted it last year. However, in Scotland, the pathway has been mandated by Government. The difficulty with voluntary adoption is exactly that: it is voluntary, which means that the nine standards of care that comprise the bereavement care pathway are not national standards in England until they are mandated by the Department of Health and Social Care. I ask the Secretary of State to consider mandating the bereavement care pathway with immediate effect, so that families and friends can be reassured that care in the most difficult of circumstances will be exemplary.

To Lottie and Logan’s family and to the many others who have written to me, thank you for your courage in sharing the most personal of stories. Your love for your children and your determination to help other families is a gift to us all. We cannot take away the pain of loss, but we can ensure that no parent walks through it alone.