Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether the proposed national maternity and neonatal action plan will include specific measures to assess and support parent–infant relationships, particularly in the period prior to discharge from maternity and neonatal units.

The National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce, chaired by my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, will translate the recommendations of Baroness Amos’ independent investigation into National Health Service maternity and neonatal care into a national action plan. The investigation’s final report will be published in June. While its final recommendations cannot be pre-empted, the taskforce’s terms of reference state that all aspects of maternity and neonatal care will be considered when developing its national action plan.

More widely, we are investing £200 million into the Best Start Family Hubs and Healthy Babies programme to strengthen Healthy Babies support in the critical 1,001 days, giving families access to enhanced perinatal mental health, parent-infant relationship, and infant feeding services, to help build the foundations for every baby’s emotional, social, and cognitive development.

On improving neonatal outreach, the NHS England Improving Postnatal Care Toolkit, published in January 2026 and available on the NHS.UK website, helps integrated care boards and local trusts optimise maternal and infant health. It requires commissioners to integrate neonatal and community care, reduce health inequalities, and recommends robust clinical handovers between neonatal units and local general practices and health visiting.