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The Falklands have to get explicit permission from this country to have new oil and gas licences, so will the Prime Minister consent to them? If the answer is yes, why is it okay to drill in the South Pacific but not in the North sea? If it is no, how does that figure with self-determination of the Falklands Islands?
The Prime Minister likes to present himself as a straight-talking kind of guy, but again and again he has been asked a straight question and not given a straight answer. Can he rule out—yes or no—taking Britain back into freedom of movement while he is Prime Minister?
First, I must declare an interest as a consultant NHS paediatrician and a member of the British Medical Association and of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and also that I have worked in neonatal intensive care in a number of different hospitals, including Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, where I worked as a junior doctor, briefly overlapping with the initial period of the Ockenden review. I congratulate the hon. Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for securing this important debate, and also charities such as Bliss, Tommy’s and Sands for their important work. As has been said, this has become somewhat of an annual debate, and it follows the same pattern. We hear many stories—we have heard many emotional stories this evening from very brave Members who have put forward their words or the words of their brave constituents. We reflect on the babies that have been lost—their first words, when they would have taken their first steps, who they would have grown up to become. We talk in sorrow and in memory. But there is also some frustration, because 13 babies every day will die shortly before, during or after their birth. So although it is important to reflect, I firmly believe that families would like us also to focus on prevention and service improvements. I shall therefore focus in the rest of my remarks on the question of whether the Government are doing all they can to tackle baby loss, and are doing so as quickly as possible. As a children’s doctor, I have been privileged to attend hundreds of births. Politics offers the opportunity to save more lives than doctors can across the whole country, because it has the power to make impactful change and save lives, and the Government must use it. Just over a decade ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash, then the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, set a target to halve the rate of stillbirths and neonatal and maternal deaths by 2030. He did not succeed completely but made encouraging progress. Stillbirths fell by 20%, neonatal deaths fell by 20% and maternal deaths fell by a third. As my right hon. Friend himself said earlier, that means that 700 additional babies a year are waking up today and tomorrow, loving their parents and being loved by their parents, and bringing great joy. The new Health Secretary came into post last month and I welcome her to her place. She is right when said that “it is time to put maternity and neonatal care and safety at the top of the NHS agenda, where they belong.”—[Official Report, 15 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 1616.] I know that this issue is important to her and we acknowledge that the Government have made progress in some areas. They have built on Conservative work by expanding baby loss certificates—we heard from the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) just how important and vital those certificates can be—and they have implemented Martha’s rule, so that people can have a second opinion. I appreciate the Secretary of State is new in post, but her predecessors have acted too slowly. The Government came to power in July 2024 saying that they had a plan for the NHS, but it took them a year, until July 2025, to bring forward their 10-year plan. They said that they will bring forward a neonatal task force, but they took seven months to decide who was going to be on it. They said that a maternity and neonatal plan was going to be produced, and that a rapid review would produce a plan by December 2025, but it came in June 2026, almost two years after their election. The national maternity investigation brought forward two key recommendations. The first recommendation is to appoint a maternity and neonatal commissioner, which the Government have promised to do. That promise was announced over three months ago, so will the Secretary of State tell us when that appointment will be made? Will it be delayed by putting it on a statutory footing or will she be able to make the appointment anyway? The second recommendation is to develop a modern service framework to establish minimum standards for maternity care. The Government announced that they were developing a national action plan on that, but it will not be ready until December 2026. Will the Secretary of State guarantee that it will be ready by December 2026, which is now very soon? In the meantime, the Government have promised £41 million for maternity and neonatal buildings. Will the Secretary of State tell us how and where this money will be spent, and which hospitals will benefit? My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) talked about people experiencing baby loss or who had babies on the neonatal unit being placed on a ward next to people who were celebrating the births of healthy children, who were beside them. Will the Secretary of State say how she is going to manage that so it does not happen any more? The Government have spoken about the black and Asian maternal mortality gap. In their manifesto, they committed to a target to close that gap. Will the Secretary of State tell us when that target will be published and how she will close that gap? The workforce is key to delivering these outcomes. The last Conservative Government created a long-term workforce plan for the NHS, but this Government decided that they wanted to create their own workforce plan, which is absolutely their right to do so. We were promised that plan by the end of 2025. We are now deep into autumn 2026, and we are being told they will provide an update on the workforce plan “in due course”. Having previously been told it was imminent, that is somewhat disappointing. The Government need to know and say how many midwives they are going to need, as well as how many obstetricians, gynaecologists and paediatricians. How will all those people be trained? How many more medical school places may be required? The Government promised time and again that they would double the number of medical school places, yet they have rowed back on that promise like it never existed. Will the Secretary of State tell us once and for all if the Government will be doubling the number of medical school places, or if that was just a 2024 general election promise? On what date will the workforce plan be ready and published? The manifesto also promised to train thousands of additional midwives. Will the Secretary of State tell us how many have been trained so far? My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) spoke about the importance of listening to women and not having an ideological fixation on a normal birth or particular type of delivery, but instead looking for a good outcome. On training, will the Secretary of State elaborate on how she intends to encourage midwives and obstetricians to see themselves as one team? I know in some places they do, but in other places, tragically they do not. Will she set out how they can work together with the wider team of anaesthetists, paediatricians and other professionals to achieve the best outcomes for women, rather than a particular ideological outcome? Some have talked this evening about the complexity of pregnancies in modern times. Can the Secretary of State talk about whether she feels nursing skills are required in midwifery, and to what extent? How does she intend to ensure that they are delivered? I know that the Government have their three shifts, one of which is prevention. Will she talk about vaccination and chronic disease optimisation before pregnancy and how they could help to reduce the number of babies lost? On a wider level, the NHS is being reorganised. I appreciate that that was announced before the Secretary of State became the Secretary of State, but the abolition of NHS England and the shaking up of ICBs is causing disruption to health services. The abolition of Healthwatch, which she still has time to do something about, is removing the independent voice—the listening to women that we have heard about so much this evening. There are many, many fantastic NHS staff, and many women—most women, in fact—get great care, but some do not, and the findings of recent investigations and investigations over many years have been hugely disturbing. I know that the Secretary of State cares very deeply about this topic, so I would like her reassurance that these plans will be published, the staff will be trained and the taskforce and commissioner will be effective, and that she will deliver on the maternity safety that everybody right across the House wants to see.
For the avoidance of doubt, will the Prime Minister confirm which country was responsible for the Jaguar Land Rover hack and, more importantly, whether there have been any repercussions?
I cannot be alone in having had many colleagues over the years report to me instances where they have received threats and the police have simply not taken them seriously. It is only when those threats have escalated and further action has been taken that the police have finally intervened, and that is simply not good enough. We have also seen in this recent case that the police communications are not appropriate and that Mr Speaker and Mr Lord Speaker are unable to offer the necessary support to those Members who have been victims. What conversation is the Home Secretary having with the police about their attitude to threats to Members of Parliament? These threats need to be taken seriously. We do not want to see another plaque put up in this Chamber for another murdered colleague.
When it comes to youth unemployment, it sounds like the Secretary of State has his head very firmly in the sand. Did he not hear Member after Member from across this House stand up and quote how the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has gone up under this Government? The Secretary of State quotes back to us the national figures for people in employment overall, but that is because the population has gone up. What are the NEET figures? In Gosport, the number of young people not in education, employment or training has gone up by 23% under this Government. That is all because of the number of taxes that are being put on the businesses there to employ them, particularly the small businesses that provide the Saturday jobs and apprenticeships: hair and beauty, adult social care and care. What will Alan Milburn’s report say, and what is the Secretary of State actually going to do about it?
On illegal immigration, the Prime Minister will be aware that in the last month, three boats have left Normandy bound for the Solent and the south coast. The Government are giving France £662 million, yet the smugglers have simply moved down the coast. On 4 October, nearly 150 people landed in Gosport, against the will of local people and of the local council and against the safety advice of the police and crime commissioner. This sends a message to these evil people-smuggling gangs that this is now a viable new route. Given that no one from the Home Office had the courtesy to contact me before, during or after those 150 people were landed on the shores of my constituency, could the Prime Minister let me know what conversations are happening with France to try to shut down these routes from Normandy?
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. The whole House supports the security services and the police for their work. I pay tribute to the brave men and women who serve our country in that way. On RAF Fairford, seven suspects were arrested, one a dual UK-Iranian national. These men were all released quickly on bail, about which senior US officials have expressed surprise. Can the Home Secretary tell the House whether she thinks it was reasonable to release those men so quickly, and whether she believes they pose any risk? Will she also tell the House whether the Government were aware in advance of any threat to RAF Fairford and, if so, what action they took? As the Prime Minister and, just now, the Home Secretary have said, it is highly likely that the Iranian state directed this. It is not acceptable for a state like Iran to organise hostile activity on our soil. After the Salisbury attacks by Russia, then Prime Minister Theresa May expelled 23 Russian diplomats. Will the Government now take similar action and expel Iranian diplomats, especially those thought to be involved in hostile activity or espionage? Does she agree that in these circumstances it was unwise of the Foreign Secretary to publicly shake hands with the Iranian Foreign Minister on 24 September, in contravention of long-standing Foreign Office policy? I note that on 4 October the US withdrew all its B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford, and both the President and vice-president of the US ascribed this to security concerns. Will the Home Secretary confirm that that is indeed why the B-1s left, and does she have any concerns about the safety of US military assets here in the UK? Shortly after the RAF incident, two Latvian men were arrested inside RAF Molesworth, which also hosts US forces? Can she comment on whether any foreign state may also have been involved in that incident? I thank the Home Secretary for her update on the police response to the terrible murder of Ann Widdecombe. The whole House mourns her, and those who knew Ann will miss her. This comes on the heels of the tragic murders of our dear colleagues Jo Cox and David Amess not that long ago. The threat against current and former Members of Parliament is clearly a very real one. Joshua Kerry, the man accused of murdering Ann, is said by prosecutors to have an “extreme left-wing mindset”, suggesting that this was a politically motivated murder. He is also accused of conducting online reconnaissance on over 100 public figures and trying to break into the home of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) last year. It has been reported that despite recovering substantial amounts of CCTV, that case was closed. It was then reopened—
I was quoting what the prosecutor said, Mr Speaker, but I will of course take your advice, as always. I was going to ask whether the Home Secretary shares my concern, which she alluded to in her statement, that the cancellation of the earlier investigation may have meant that opportunities to prevent the later tragedy were missed. I understand that a number of current and former MPs have very recently been contacted to be told that they appeared on a list made by Kerry. Kerry was arrested on 11 July, but it was not until last week—nearly three months later—that some on that list, including current and former MPs, were notified. Can the Home Secretary tell the House when she knew about that list? Does she agree that it would be wrong if those on it had had that information withheld from them for a period of time, potentially as long as three months? Threats to democratically elected representatives are threats to democracy itself, so I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement on protective security, including for those outside Parliament—recognising, of course, that it is Mr Speaker who plays the leading role in protecting Members of Parliament. I would also like to mark the anniversary of the terrible deaths of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby at Heaton Park synagogue in an antisemitic attack perpetrated by an Islamist extremist. In the year since, I have twice visited Golders Green in the aftermath of antisemitic attacks. As the Home Secretary said, in the last 10 days two Iranian small boat illegal immigrants have been charged with plotting a further antisemitic terror attack in Manchester. It is more important than ever that we redouble our efforts to fight antisemitism and Islamist extremism with all our might. On that topic, I wrote to the Home Secretary on 27 September asking her to deny an entry visa to Randa Abdel-Fattah, who praised the appalling terrorist massacre on 7 October as “exhilarating”. But the Home Secretary allowed her into our country anyway. Why did the Home Secretary do that, given the obvious risk that Abdel-Fattah might radicalise others with her antisemitic and pro-terror views? I really think that demands a specific answer. There are clearly a wide range of serious threats to the safety of our country, political leaders across the political spectrum and our Jewish community. I know that the whole House will be united in wanting to fight those threats. I thank again those serving in the security services and the police, who work tirelessly to keep us safe. The whole House supports them in their vital work.
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. He will know—as, indeed, will the whole House—how important it is for Ministers to provide timely responses to correspondence from Members. Those on the Treasury Bench will have heard his concerns, and I note that it is the Leader of the House who is listening to this. He takes these matters very seriously, and will, I am sure, report to the relevant Health Minister to ensure that the hon. Member’s concerns are addressed.
We now come to the first Select Committee statement. The Chair of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith), will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which time no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of her statement, Members may ask questions on the subject of the statement. They must be brief questions, not full speeches.
The hon. Lady has got off very lightly, since it seems that nobody wishes to ask her a question on that.
We come to the second Select Committee statement, on behalf of the International Development Committee. Sarah Champion will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which there will be no interventions. At the conclusion of her statement, Members may ask questions on the subject of the statement.
I thank both Select Committee Chairs for their statements.
Order. Members will know that there is protected time, so we have until 11.02 pm, but it would be helpful if they could keep their remarks to seven or eight minutes.
My constituents are facing extremely large delays in getting a response from the DWP. One of my constituents has now been waiting for two months for a response with regard to his dispute with the Child Maintenance Service, despite receiving a final letter before action. Another constituent has been waiting for four months for a response to his PIP review claim. Why are we seeing such long delays, what is the Minister doing to resolve them, and why have my constituents not had a response in months?
On 28 September, Javier Milei initiated annex VII arbitration proceedings against the United Kingdom in relation to halting activities at the Sea Lion oilfield. That deadline expired yesterday, and I assume that we have not complied. The Government have already said that they would robustly defend the Falkland Islands against this, which is great. Javier Milei will now initiate proceedings under the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. I agree that we should push back against this. However, last May, the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), said from the Dispatch Box that the “most proximate, and the most potentially serious” legal challenge facing us about the Chagos islands was “the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.”—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 1291.] Why are we prepared to defend the Falkland Islands against ITLOS, but not the Chagos islands?
RAF Molesworth is in my constituency, and the break-in last week has caused concern locally, it being next to a very small village. People are rightly concerned that the base is vulnerable, whether this was criminal activity or a foreign actor intervening. We have three bases in my constituency, two for US visiting forces, and one UK base. Two of them are among the most strategically sensitive sites in western Europe, and we have a small and quite underfunded police force. I appreciate that the situation is complicated, because it mixes Cambridgeshire constabulary, Ministry of Defence police, Counter Terrorism Policing and US visiting forces. I went out with Ministry of Defence police the other day on Project Servator, which acts as a deterrent locally, but it was not something that I had heard of, and it certainly is not something that local people are aware of. There is a real opportunity for briefings or encouragement in areas like mine, to make people more vigilant about this type of activity and the vulnerability of those military bases.
T6. I recently met Lesley and her adult daughter Alice, who has profound disabilities and requires two carers around the clock. Lesley loves caring for her daughter, but she is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit skilled carers, leaving her filling exhausting gaps and unable to earn a living. What is the Minister doing to ensure that families like Lesley’s receive the support that they desperately need?
In recent weeks, we have seen once again that Iran poses a grave threat to the British people and our allies. Our intelligence relationships are our first line of defence, and Israel is among our most valuable partners in countering that threat. Given the fallout from his decision to sanction Israeli settlements and the deteriorating relationship that has followed, will the Prime Minister give the House a clear assurance today that intelligence co-operation with Israel is continuing in full—or is he putting at risk the safety and security of the British people?
The so-called energy ceasefire is a farce. All but one of Ukraine’s oil refineries has already been destroyed. It is about protecting Russia’s oil refineries while Russia bombs Ukraine’s power grid into obliteration and it results in a health disaster. Will the Prime Minister commit to sending large-scale generators to Ukraine now, and will he stand by our Saudi allies at the UN Security Council and under chapter VII designate the Houthis as a terrorist organisation—yes or no?
We hear quite often when women have high-risk pregnancies, “Don’t worry, contingency care is there.” I had placenta accreta last year, which is one of the few pregnancy conditions that still kill women in birth. I remember turning up for scans, having been told there was an 11% chance that I might die on the day I gave birth, and the high-risk team saying, “So it’s just a normal pregnancy, right? Everything’s going really great. We will get this done really quickly, find out how things are.” That is the lack of care taken with women who are carrying everything that matters at that time. Many people say, “Don’t worry, high-risk is fine. It is dealt with really well; it is only standard pregnancies” but I want to stress the point that there is still a comprehensive issue.
I want to unite those points by drawing again on personal experience. My son reacted badly to being induced, and his heart rate stopped. We were rushed to the emergency room: “We have to get him out! We have to get him out!” Just before they cut, somebody screamed, “Stop! His heart rate has gone back to normal. He’s fine. You don’t need a C-section.” Stood at the end of the bed were an obstetrician and a midwife, and the midwife said, “Great, you don’t need a C-section any more.” The surgeon said, “Yes, she does. She needs to have it now. She needs to have it.” They said to me, “You need to decide.” They refused to come to an agreement about what was safer for my baby, and they said that I had to make that decision. That is exactly the problem, and my right hon. Friend is so brave to make the point, because he will come under criticism for saying that there is such a thing as an obsession with natural birth. A safe birth is the best birth, and I am thankful to him for his bravery in making that point tonight.
I thank the hon. Members who secured this debate, and all the families who have, in their darkest moments, raised their voices so that we can support them and, it is to be hoped, prevent future tragedies. I welcome the Health Secretary’s promise to publish a national action plan, and I want to focus on a few issues that I hope will be reflected in it. The first follows on from the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt). We must stop pushing women towards a normal birth. When my friends tell me that they are pregnant, I say to them, “You need to have the confidence to challenge the NHS.” We are taught to say, “Thank you; of course, whatever you say.” This is the one time in life when we should say, “Why? Stop. What are the other options? I want a different opinion. I need some time.” We must teach women to listen to their body, and to trust what it says. We cannot say there is no obsession with normal births. When I was pregnant with my second, the hospital forced me to go on a one-hour online course, to convince me to have a vaginal birth, though I had an emergency C-section previously. At the end of the course, the hospital asked all of us on it, “Which of you are now ready to accept that you should go for vaginal birth?”. All the women said that they were, apart from me. The hospital said, “Why won’t you say yes?”. I said, “Well, on slide 20-something, you said that it was x% safer for me and my baby to have a second C-section, so that’s what I want.” They said, “It does say that, but let’s go for a natural birth. You can do it!” This is an obsession, and we have to challenge it.
I am afraid that I will be drawing on a lot of personal experiences, but I scrapped at least nine further examples. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The next thing I want to impress on the Health Secretary is that it should be mandatary to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, for babies before they are discharged, particularly if they have been in a neonatal intensive care unit. During most pregnancies, we study what to do if our baby needs CPR, but we all know, even if we have had a baby before, the difference between the pregnancy course and how things are once we have held that baby in our arms. It is so different. I praise Addenbrooke’s hospital, because it forced my husband to do a CPR course before I was discharged, as my daughter had to go into NICU for a brief period. When we came home, only about two weeks after she had been born, and when she finally reached her due date, she suddenly stopped breathing. It happened out of nowhere. We were sitting in bed. I remember screaming for my husband, and I think of the poor person on the phone when we dialled 999. I am normally quite good in an emergency, but not then. I lost the plot. I was screaming down the phone, “My baby’s dying! My baby’s dying! You have to save her.” Because my husband had done that CPR course, he was able to save this tiny baby’s life; it took them too long to get an ambulance to us. Her temperature had fallen below 34°C by the time the ambulance arrived. He saved her life at a time when I could not. I was not in a place where I could save my baby. Yet we let people go home from hospital without being retaught CPR, once they know what it is to hold a baby. I genuinely believe that it would save so many lives if we did what Addenbrooke’s did and forced people to spend 20 minutes doing a CPR course before they went home. The next issue I will touch on is maternal death, because as my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash said, the numbers are rising. The leading direct cause of maternal death in this country is blood clots, but no friend who is pregnant or has gone through a pregnancy will say that that is the No. 1 cause. Instead, they will talk about diabetes, bleeding out during birth and all sorts of other things. I have gone back and looked through all three of my NHS trust books—I kept mine, although people are not meant to keep them after birth, because the NHS does not like them having all that evidence that they could use if there were ever an issue—and there is nothing about blood clots. NHS staff do not provide education about blood clots to women when they are pregnant, yet they are the No. 1 cause of maternal death. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is responsible for guidance, which is meant to be republished every few years, on how to prevent, diagnose and treat blood clots, but it has not updated that guidance since 2015. That means midwives and obstetricians have had no updated guidelines on how to handle the most common cause of death in women in pregnancy and after birth. Reviews were missed in 2018, 2021 and 2024. I have started to fight with the college to get it to do something about this, but even now, it says that it will not get updated guidance out until at least 2027. How many more women will die before then? I have met representatives from Thrombosis UK, and there would be no negative outcome from giving all women anticoagulants throughout their pregnancy; it poses no risk to them. Unfortunately, last year, I was one of the people affected by this. I have had a real few years of it. I went to the doctor and said, “There is something wrong me with me. My only symptom is a slight catch in my chest.” I was not grabbing my chest and screaming, like everyone else does. I was dismissed, sent home, and told that there was nothing wrong with me. A lady wrote to me and said that she went to the doctor three times, worried about blood clots. She knew there was something not right in her leg, but each time, she was told she just needed to do some yoga and get moving. On the fourth time, the blood clots were finally diagnosed. In my case, I went back to the doctor and said, “There is something really wrong.” Luckily, the doctor did a D-dimer test, and then rang me to say that I needed to go to Addenbrooke’s immediately. The doctors found five clots that had passed through my heart and into my lungs. I was lucky to be alive. Addenbrooke’s said that I clearly had an exceptional doctor. I am so grateful to Dr Laura Stephens for saving my life. The average woman has no idea that blood clots are the No. 1 maternal killer. Some 25% of those deaths happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, during which women probably do not go to the doctor, because they have done a pregnancy test and know that they are pregnant. The Department of Health and Social Care needs to do a mass awareness campaign. GPs need to be aware of the risks, and obstetricians and midwives need to be taught about not just “normal” birth, but all births. Tomorrow is World Thrombosis Day. I am calling for maternal blood clot prevention to be a priority in the new national strategy, because we can prevent them; almost all deaths of women from blood clots could have been prevented. It may seem odd, but I briefly want to talk about a real cruelty that has been inflicted on mothers. The former Prime Minister apologised for the horrendous forced adoption scandal that took place in this country, but some babies never left those mother-and-baby homes. ITV found that 200 infants from eight homes were buried in mass plots in 10 cemeteries across the UK. As part of this work, will the Health Secretary ensure that the Government force local authorities, churches and charities to open up their records? The mums who were forced into those cruel mother-and-baby centres, and then lost their baby or had a stillbirth, do not know to this day where their baby is buried, and the graves are unmarked.
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Our little ones must be very close in age; I hope that his is doing very well. The Prime Minister said, “We are sorry,” but opening up the records would show that we meant it. It would release those mothers from the shame that was forced on them, and allow them to finally find their baby, name them, and lay them to rest. Often in this place, we talk about what should be done, or what we could do, so I will end very briefly on a positive note. We cannot undo a family’s heartache, or the loss that they will carry for all their lives, but what drives most of us to come here is a determination to stop the same thing happening to someone else. I made that promise to my best friend in 2022, when she lost her baby Siena at nine months. I took my promise and secured £1.8 million in funding from the then Conservative Health Secretary to roll out a new technology designed to reduce stillbirths and premature births. The Tommy’s app—or Siena app—is a clinical decision support tool that accurately assesses women’s chance of having a premature birth, or developing complications with the placenta that can lead to stillbirth, and it is proven that it is saving lives. The trial began in 2024 and is running in 26 NHS maternity units, involving 39,000 women a year. My request to the Health Secretary is to roll out the app across every single hospital. We have proven that it works. It essentially gives midwives an artificial intelligence equivalent. It gives them all the information that they may not know or understand about someone because they come from a different heritage, have a different background or have a complicated medical history. This tool can save lives, and can save more families from the heartache that too many suffer. We must do better. We are failing women on too many accounts. Almost all of us in this room can probably share a trauma, or a time when something went wrong in the NHS because we were not listened to, and we must do more. I thank everyone for their frankness, and for sharing their stories this evening, and I thank the Health Secretary for agreeing to meet me in a few days; I am really grateful.
When the Secretary of State meets her officials and has this discussion, I urge her to cite what happened during the pandemic. Despite the fact that it was medically illogical, what did middle managers do in NHS hospitals? They said that women who were coming to give birth or to miscarry had to do so without their partners. People told me, “This is a nonsense, Alicia. Stop saying that women are being treated badly by the NHS. Women have given birth for thousands of years.” Women were mistreated during the pandemic and we were shown the maternity sidecar, exactly as the Secretary of State said. I say to anyone who stands in her way on this issue that she is absolutely right. We have the evidence of the last few years, and I urge her to use it.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and for his call over the weekend. I do not envy him the position in which he has been placed in these past few weeks. The scenes that we have witnessed on the streets of Drumcree are all too reminiscent of previous times—times that we had all hoped were past, and times that we must still hope are past. The willingness of communities nearly 30 years ago to submit to independent adjudication processes was one of the pillars of the peace. It is consequently at best irresponsible and at worst dangerous for people to ignore those processes when they do not go their way. Further, it is inexcusable for anyone, but particularly politicians, to decide that they will only obey the law when it suits them. That is the road to a very dark place. As the Secretary of State has set out, the planned march was legal, subject to the detailed restrictions placed upon it by the Parades Commission. It follows that under section 14 of the Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act 1998, those who prevented this lawful march would seem to have broken the law. The stand-off that they caused ultimately led to Chief Constable Boutcher asking the Secretary of State to review the Parades Commission’s determination and stop the march. The Chief Constable said that facilitating it would have “required a substantial public order intervention that was not assessed to be proportionate, and which would have carried an unacceptable risk of serious injury, disorder and a wider contagion effect across Northern Ireland.” I hope that the Secretary of State can be clear with the House about what is behind this statement and what the nature of that risk was. Was the Secretary of State at any stage made aware of a possibility of terrorism? Was he at any stage made aware that firearms or explosives were likely to be deployed? I very much hope he was not, but the House should know. I know that the Secretary of State was placed in a desperately invidious position, but the consequence of the march not going ahead is that those who have broken the law have won. The consequence is that those who threaten the “serious injury, disorder and wider contagion”, of which the Chief Constable warned, have won. Unless remedy is made, the message being sent to Northern Ireland is that people can pick and choose which laws they obey, and that those who threaten violence and disorder will get their way. I know that that is not what the Secretary of State wants, but he needs to tell the House what he intends to do to prevent that terrible message being the legacy of these past few weeks. I know that it is not for him to determine how the police exercise their duties following this incident, but I hope he can tell the House how the Government now intend to prevent the law from being openly flouted again and again and again.
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Helen Jenner MS stands ready to lead Reform UK in Wales. As Leader of the Opposition, she will hold Plaid Cymru to account every step of the way.
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May I apologise for the timing of the statement and thank the Opposition for their understanding? With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement on the report of the three-year public inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2018 led by Lady Justice Thirlwall, published today. I am grateful to Lady Justice Thirlwall for her thorough and devastating report. At the heart of the inquiry have been 13 families who lost their newborn babies or who saw them experience serious collapse or injury at the hospital 10 and 11 years ago. I cannot begin to fathom the grief and pain of the parents and families. The mother of Baby J describes her grief: “I cannot emphasise enough the impact of this on our whole family. Who we are as people, parents, work life, spouses, children…[it] has cast a shadow of sadness over every part of our lives.” Those parents have had to face the unimaginable. I recognise that they have waited many years for the details set out in this report and that it will continue to add to the distress and the loss that they have endured. They should be in all our thoughts throughout all the discussions of today’s report. The public inquiry was commissioned by the then Health Secretary in September 2023, following the conviction of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of a further six babies. Lady Justice Thirlwall has been clear that it was not her role to look at the convictions, the legal process, or the court evidence, and she is explicit about not cutting across the work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Instead, her focus was on the experiences of the parents of the babies named in the indictment, the conduct of those working at the Countess of Chester hospital, including whether action should have been taken earlier, and the effectiveness of NHS management, governance, scrutiny and regulation in keeping babies in hospital safe. That is also the focus of this statement. In the words of Lady Justice Thirlwall, “The Report sets out a dispiriting and at times shocking account of multiple and repeated mistakes and failings by organisations and individuals.” The inquiry describes the increase in neonatal deaths in 2015 and 2016 at the hospital, the concerns about the possibility of deliberate harm that were raised by clinicians at an early stage, but then the repeated failures of organisations and individuals to act: shocking failures to put the safety of babies first; shocking failures on safeguarding; failures in governance and in regulation; failures in the most basic duty of candour; failures in professional curiosity; and repeated failures to refer concerns to the police, which the inquiry is clear should have been done at a much earlier stage. Lady Justice Thirlwall comes to the devastating conclusion “that some babies would have been saved…if action was taken earlier.” Central to the findings are what Lady Justice Thirlwall describes as “complete failure at all levels to invoke safeguarding procedures at any point.” She explains: “No one seems to have thought that safeguarding action is required when a member of staff is suspected of causing deliberate harm. Suspicion is enough.” The inquiry also identifies failure among external bodies, including the Care Quality Commission, which failed to consider the data and ask the right questions, and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which should have known as soon as it was engaged that this was a matter that needed to be referred to the police. The inquiry finds repeated failures of governance and candour by the trust and by individuals within it. Disturbingly, it refers to an “exercise in spin” to steer away from referral to the police. That is an appalling finding—an exercise in spin instead of putting the safety of babies first. Worst of all, the trust repeatedly failed the parents: it failed to keep their beloved babies safe; it failed repeatedly to provide them with information which they had a right to know; and it failed to ask their consent for sharing information with external experts and other organisations, or to keep them up to date with investigations. For parents to be kept in the dark for years about what was happening is, as Lady Justice Thirlwall has said, “reprehensible”. Let me address the issues for the families and the parents directly. The suffering endured by the babies and their families is impossible to comprehend. On behalf of the Government and the health service, I am profoundly sorry for the failures set out so clearly in the report, for the harm, distress and unthinkable loss for their families, and for the failures to keep their babies safe. Our responsibility now is to act. Let me be clear: the safety and care of babies, the safeguarding of every patient, the respect for families—all those go to the heart of our NHS values. They must be at the heart not just of what we say, but what we do. Let me turn to the recommendations. Lady Justice Thirlwall has made 17 recommendations on what needs to be done to keep babies safe. The inquiry recognises that in many areas things have changed since the terrible events took place, including welcome improvements at the Countess hospital in services for women and children. However, the inquiry is clear that new action is needed. I take the recommendations extremely seriously. The Government will, of course, consider the entire report and set out a full response, but let me highlight some key areas today. On the crucial issue of safeguarding, Lady Justice Thirlwall recommends compulsory training, a new protocol and employment requirements. A revised NHS safeguarding framework was published in April 2026, but I have asked the chief nursing officer to urgently review the framework and the training in the light of the report. We need to look urgently at that. Let me be clear: this goes beyond laws and procedures, many of which are already clear; this is about leadership and responsibility. Safeguarding is everyone’s business and safeguarding must be everyone’s priority. Concerns must be heard and acted upon. Staff who speak up must be protected and taken seriously. I expect every leader, every board across the NHS, every professional, every manager and every member of staff to uphold their safeguarding responsibilities. I will not hesitate to hold the NHS to account for the highest standards at every level, because at its heart, this is what the NHS stands for: care for patients and, most of all, keeping the most vulnerable patients of all safe. On safety and reassurance for parents, Lady Justice Thirlwall recommends the introduction of video baby monitors for neonatal units. I agree. I have asked my officials to urgently develop plans for cot-cams, which can also help parents feel better connected to their babies when they are unable to be with them in person. The inquiry says that the sudden unexpected death in infancy and childhood guidance must be updated. I agree. That is now under way. It welcomes the introduction of medical examiners but says that this should have happened 10 years earlier. I agree. We will set out further plans to strengthen their neonatal expertise following the inquiry’s recommendations when the Government set out their full response. The inquiry recommends much stronger controls on insulin storage. The NHS has begun that process with new guidance in January this year, but we agree with the recommendation to go further. It recommends new regulation on NHS managers, not just on clinical professionals. The Government have consulted on and confirmed plans to apply a barring scheme to senior leaders and managers, not just to clinicians. We will legislate to introduce the scheme as soon as parliamentary time allows, and we will consider the chair’s recommendation to expand it further. The report also makes recommendations for the regulators, including the CQC, which we will ensure are taken seriously. On technology, we have implemented the maternity outcomes signal system, which provides near-real-time safety alerts, but we agree that we must do more. I agree with the report that when the very worst happens and parents face bereavement, they need to be supported to the best of our ability. The report recommends that the national bereavement care pathway for neonatal death should be rolled out in 2027. I agree, and can confirm that all trusts are signed up to implement it. I will ensure that it is repeated in all versions of the NHS planning framework while I am the Secretary of State. Lady Justice Thirlwall highlights problems with past inquiry recommendations not being implemented, so my Department is setting up a recommendation hub to properly track our implementation progress internally, not just for this inquiry but for others right across the NHS. But we will work with the Cabinet Office now on improvements in this area, to respond to this inquiry. This afternoon I will discuss with the maternity taskforce our plan to bring forward amendments in the Health Bill to create a new maternity and neonatal commissioner to address the serious concerns around safety and standards that have been raised. Later this week, I will meet Lady Justice Thirlwall to discuss how we take forward the report’s conclusions. I want to highlight a final issue that has struck me while reading through the different volumes of this inquiry. A section of the report refers to the way senior oversight of neonatal care had been downgraded in the reorganisation of the Countess hospital. It includes the fact that the board and the medical director reviewed deaths within the hospital. However, this only covered adult deaths. The report says that “the Board did not receive any reports about the deaths of babies and children at any stage during the period I am considering. This was a serious failure of governance, which no one on the Board seems to have noticed. This is further evidence of the inadequacy of the structure, which removed the voice of children and babies from the Board, and the lack of profile of paediatrics and neonatology.” I am clear that the safety, safeguarding and wellbeing of babies must never again be treated as a side issue. As I reflect on some of the safety reports on maternity services we have seen in recent years, let me also be clear that maternity and neonatal services cannot operate on the margins. They must be at the forefront—a central priority in what our NHS must do at the vital and precious start of a family’s life. I want to thank the families for the extraordinary courage and dignity they have shown. I also thank Lady Justice Thirlwall and her team for their rigorous work. This must be a turning point for the NHS. When concerns are raised, especially about safety and safeguarding, they must be heard and acted upon, and it is time to put maternity and neonatal care and safety at the top of the NHS agenda, where they belong. I commend this statement to the House.
I thank the right hon. Member for his response and questions and for the compassion he shows for the families who have been so badly affected by these terrible events—by the failures in the NHS and the crimes that have taken place. Our intention is to publish the full response within six months and to ensure that we have done so thoroughly. I will discuss this further with Lady Justice Thirlwall later this week. The issue about whistleblowers, which the right hon. Member raised, is incredibly important. The report states: “The way the grievance and its consequences were handled was deplorable” and the way in which the trust responded to these concerns was completely wrong. It also went against the guidance and rules that it was supposed to follow. That is why part of this is about ensuring that the right systems are in place; part of it is also about leadership, responsibility and culture, and ensuring that we are holding all those to account at every level in supporting this, particularly in relation to safeguarding. The safeguarding of babies should have been taken the most seriously of all. The right hon. Member specifically raised the issues with HSSIB. The inquiry is clear about the important role of HSSIB. The intention of our reforms is for that role to continue. As part of the Health Bill, it involves transferring HSSIB into the Care Quality Commission. However, that independent role and investigations will continue. I plan to review the detail of this to ensure that we are meeting the spirit of the inquiry’s recommendation, because it is immensely important that we have those arrangements in place. The right hon. Member also referred to the issues around the systems, interoperability and having the data assessments. Of course, we now have new systems in place, including the maternity outcomes signal system. That, when applied to the data that emerged from the Countess of Chester, does make it clear that real-time safety alerts would have been flagged, but of course, in the hospital, the clinicians already knew that a significant increase had taken place, but also they had unexplained deaths and a series of issues that were raised within the hospital. There was a failure of the board to review this, a failure of oversight, a failure of governance and a failure to take proper action. The right hon. Member raised the recommendation that we need to look at a series of reports. In this case, we know that a series of recommendations have been made, particularly about patient safety and often including whistleblowing. We need to ensure that these recommendations are actually implemented. We must not keep going around in the same circles. I am conscious that, shockingly, these events took place in 2015 and 2016, very soon after the Lampard review into the NHS, which had made clear the importance of safeguarding. Safeguarding should have been on everybody’s minds at the time, even if the circumstances were very different from what happened here. The issues around safeguarding and patient safety should have been taken incredibly seriously, and they were not. The right hon. Member is right that we need to ensure that systems are in place, but again, even immediately after reports were published, we still had a failure in this case to implement them and to adopt their spirit. On the recommendations about the NAO, the right hon. Member will know that it is a cross-Government issue. However, I have made it clear that the Department of Health and Social Care will establish a hub for health inquiry recommendations, so that alongside the cross-Government discussion we can ensure that the NHS is doing what it needs to do.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this and for consistently speaking out for her constituents who have endured the unimaginable and been through the most horrendous experiences within their families—the loss of a baby, or a collapse—and to then have to go through everything that has happened since and still to have shown, as Lady Justice Thirlwall says, such huge dignity in responding to this inquiry. As the inquiry makes clear, those parents and families have given evidence exactly in the hope that this does not happen again to other families in other hospitals, as well as in Chester, and I pay huge tribute to them. I will take forward the point that my hon. Friend raised about the cross-Government issues, in discussion with the Cabinet Office—she is right to raise that—and I will undertake to draw together the recommendations from NHS inquiries. I also highlight, because I know it will be important for her constituency, that Lady Justice Thirlwall says: “in 2025, a large modern women and children’s unit opened, providing integrated family care for babies and their families. This welcome change represents a huge improvement in neonatal care at the Countess.” That will be hugely important to families in her constituency, but it does not take away from the devastating conclusions of this report and the action that needs to be taken.
I thank the hon. Member for her comments, her tribute to the families and her recognition of how much they have endured. She is right to highlight the importance of the duty of candour. One of the most shocking findings of the inquiry was that an “exercise in spin” was put above patient safety, including the safety of some of the most vulnerable patients of all, newborn babies, which is truly shocking. Boards are already responsible for ensuring that they follow the duty of candour. The inquiry found crucial breaches of the board’s duty of candour and responsibilities in a series of areas, including the responsibility to provide information to the reviews done, and safeguarding responsibilities that should have been clear. We will look further at the responsibility framework, the regulation of managers and clinicians, and the leadership’s responsibilities to ensure that what should happen takes place. The hon. Lady will know that the local guardians remain; that is extremely important. On HSSIB, I agree with her that that role needs to continue. It is the intention for that role to continue as part of the CQC, but I have undertaken to look again at those arrangements to ensure that they meet the expectations of the inquiry’s report. Fundamentally, the point that the hon. Lady makes is about the anger and sense of deep frustration and injustice about the fact that we are here again, discussing some of the same issues. For me, that is about two things. The first is patient safety, which has been discussed time and again when we have these kinds of recommendations. The second is the sense of the sidelining of maternity and neonatal care, which have been seen as a side issue in too many places, rather than being central. We have to put the cradle back at the heart of the NHS. We have always talked about the NHS being there from cradle to grave. The very start of a child’s life, and the very start of a family’s life, is one of the most important moments, and we have to make sure that our NHS keeps that at the centre of what it does.
