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1. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Tracy Gilbert

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on coming first in the private Member’s Bill ballot and on promoting this Bill. In the previous Session, my private Member’s Bill was the first to pass through this place and the other place, so I wish the right hon. Gentleman similar success with his very important Bill. Having taken through a private Member’s Bill, I know full well the hard work that he and his team will be putting into the proposals, and I want to put on record my thanks to them for doing so. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Floor of the House about the importance of a baby’s first 1,000 days of life. We all know of the love, care and attention that new-born babies need to thrive. By the time they reach 1,001 days old, they will already have progressed to having some form of independence in eating and communicating. The devastating fact, however, is that in the same timeframe, the impact of financial and health inequalities will already be visible. The gap between the most affluent and the most deprived areas will already be evident in toddlers’ groups and nurseries across our communities. For Labour Members, tackling these inequalities is a fundamental goal. We wanted to be elected to eradicate this unfairness. I am therefore keen to hear from the Minister how this Bill could further the Government’s ambitious tackling child poverty strategy. I want to speak about the growing number of babies across the UK who are born as the result of a surrogacy arrangement either here in the UK or abroad. We cannot be absolutely sure how many babies have been born through a surrogacy arrangement, but what we do know is that the number of parental orders granted by the courts, in line with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, increased from 132 in 2011 to 450 in 2021. The number of babies being born as the result of surrogacy is far more than the handful of cases that the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 had intended to cover. The growing number of babies being born as the result of surrogacy arrangements poses a serious issue that we as legislators must address. I do not intend to cover all the points today, but I want to cover two areas in particular. The number of UK nationals using commercial surrogacy arrangements abroad is on the rise. The explosion in international surrogacy is estimated to be worth a $200 billion industry by 2032. Too many babies in their first 1,001 days are being left in legal limbo, because the Surrogacy Arrangements Act did not legislate for overseas commercial surrogacy arrangements, and, as far as I am aware, this place has not taken a view or held a debate on this issue. My position is clear. We should follow our EU partners in Spain, France and Germany in banning surrogacy and, at the very least, we should work in this place to prevent the harms caused by international surrogacy. The failure of this House to have debated the increasing use of international surrogacy arrangements has resulted in different rules applying between adoption and surrogacy. For instance, the Children and Adoption Act 2006 places a duty on the Secretary of State to maintain and publish a list of countries where restrictions on inter-country adoption apply, yet a similar process does not exist for surrogacy. In 2021, the then Secretary of State used his power to place Nigeria on the list of restricted countries, therefore preventing all adoptions between the UK and Nigeria. The reasons given for this decision, which is still in place today, include unreliable documentation, corruption and evidence of child trafficking. Those harmful and illegal practices, however, are not isolated to adoption. For example, earlier this year, a Nigerian police force made five arrests exposing child trafficking and an illegal surrogacy syndicate under the guise of an orphanage. There is no law currently preventing a child born in such circumstances from being brought to the UK. This void in legislation creates a vacuum where children’s welfare and children’s rights are left unprotected while fuelling the international surrogacy syndicates that put women and girls in developing countries at further risk. My second point is that the procedures and guidance about surrogacy that are available to midwives, doctors, nurses and health teams on maternity wards are often out of date and very patchy. In some parts of the country, midwives may experience a number of births involving a surrogate; others may see very few or none at all. It is therefore even more important that up-to-date guidance is available with the very best information, so that the care of the mother and child, both pre and post birth, is the very best it can be. Through freedom of information requests to all Scottish NHS boards, I have discovered that only NHS Ayrshire and Arran and NHS Fife have active guidance in place for midwives and clinician teams on the care and treatment of surrogate mothers and babies to ensure that the law is followed and to set out where they can access support. Of the other Scottish NHS boards, five have no policy at all, one has a draft policy, four have a policy on which a review is overdue, and one refers to the Department of Health and Social Care guidance. Midwives across Scotland are being left to their own devices in ensuring that babies born under a surrogacy arrangement receive uninterrupted care and treatment. I encourage the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that maternity wards and midwives across England are not left in the same position.

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2. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Tracy Gilbert

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   I absolutely agree that the Scottish Government must take some action on this matter. In conclusion, I would be keen to see if there are areas where I can work with the right hon. Member for New Forest West to look at changing the law to ensure that babies born through a surrogacy arrangement and the women giving birth to them are no longer forgotten.

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3. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Torcuil Crichton

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech on international surrogacy, as she has done previously on adoption. I commend the efforts of the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) to bring in this new law. Does my hon. Friend agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) that the Scottish Government should closely follow what is happening in this House today and consider similar laws on the rights of babies and on surrogacy?

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4. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Steve Yemm

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   First, I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on securing first place in the ballot and, more importantly, on choosing to use that valuable opportunity to introduce this Bill. There are many subjects that a Member fortunate enough to come first in the ballot might choose. The right hon. Gentleman has chosen one that is both profoundly important and—too often, I think—absent from our political debate: the health and development of babies, the wellbeing of their parents and carers, and the support available to families during pregnancy and the first two years of a child’s life. That is why I am so pleased to support the Bill. I do so not only as the Member of Parliament for Mansfield but as a father and a grandfather. When I think about the matters before us, I think about my own grandchildren, Samuel, Joseph, Rosa and Martha—and indeed those grandchildren in our family who are yet to be born. I think about the families into which they were born, the love and care that surround them and the extraordinary speed with which I have seen them begin to develop a personality, to form relationships and to make sense of the world. Inevitably, that makes this debate personal, but it should be personal for all of us, because every Member of the House represents thousands of families who want exactly the same thing for their children and grandchildren: for them to be safe, healthy, loved and given the best possible start in life. The wellbeing of babies should therefore not be a party political matter. As many hon. Members have alluded to, babies do not comment on my Facebook posts or attempt to come to my surgery, yet the decisions we take in this House shape the circumstances in which those children begin their lives. That is why the Bill matters so much. The 1,001 days between conception and a child’s second birthday are not simply a preliminary period before the more important business of education begins. It is the period in which the foundations of a child’s physical health, emotional security and ability to form relationships, develop language and develop future capacity to learn are all being laid. A child does not suddenly acquire life chances when they first walk through the school gates; by that point, a great deal has already happened. Of course, we should never suggest that the course of a child’s life has been irreversibly decided before the age of two. Children are resilient, families overcome extraordinary difficulty, and good schools, good public services and strong communities can transform lives. However, we should recognise what the evidence and the daily experience of families tell us. Early relationships, responsive care, good nutrition, physical safety and the emotional wellbeing of parents all matter enormously, and when a family needs help, the earlier that help is available, the more effective it is likely to be. We talk a great deal in this place about prevention—about preventing ill health, family breakdown, or children falling behind at school—but prevention requires us to act before a difficulty becomes a crisis, and to invest political attention in people whose needs are not always visible or vocal. That is the central strength of this Bill. It does not attempt to invent an entirely new structure or prescribe from Westminster how every service in every community should operate; instead, it seeks to place a stronger and more enduring statutory foundation beneath the support that families already need and, in some places, already receive. Supporting families does not mean replacing them—parents are the first and most important people in a child’s life. Our role, and the role of government, is not to take over the ordinary work of raising children; it is to create all of the conditions in which families can fulfil those responsibilities. As such, the best services work alongside families. They respect parents’ knowledge of their own children, offer reliable advice, identify risks, and help parents to develop confidence. That is also why services need to be welcoming and non-stigmatising. If support is associated only with crisis, parents may delay asking for help because they fear judgment. The Government’s Best Start family hubs and healthy babies programme provides an important basis on which to build. The commitment of £500 million between this year and 2029, the expansion of Best Start family hubs across every upper-tier local authority, and the enhanced healthy babies support in areas of high deprivation all demonstrate that the Government understand the importance of this period. All Labour Members should be proud of the legacy of Sure Start. At its best, Sure Start understood that children’s wellbeing could not be separated neatly into health, education, family circumstances and so forth. It brought support into communities and created places where parents could seek assistance without stigma. My own daughter described Sure Start centres in Mansfield as “the best place in the universe”, so we should learn from the best of Sure Start, the family hubs programme, and the experience of Start for Life. Families are more interested in whether doors are open, the staff are present and help is effective than they are in thinking about the organisational model. When I consider this Bill, I naturally think about my own family, but I also think about the generations of children in Mansfield and across the country whose names we do not yet know. If we believe that every child should have the opportunity to flourish, our commitment cannot begin at nursery or primary school; it must begin at the beginning. I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West again, and hope that Members across the House will allow the Bill to proceed without dividing, work constructively on its detail in Committee, and give support for babies and their families—the enduring foundation that they deserve and that this Bill can help to provide. I commend the Bill to the House.

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5. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Samantha Niblett

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   The hon. Member is being incredibly generous with her time. I was delighted to contribute to her debate on infant feeding, and I thank her for her leadership on that. When we talk about the information and advice that is available to people, does she agree that one thing that can make a difference is the right person at the right time? I will not make this too much of a speech—I will include this when I get to speak—but the difference made by a midwife who arrives just at the moment when someone is prepared to give up can sometimes result in someone’s daughter acquiring the middle name of that midwife, just as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) said.

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6. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Ruth Jones

   House of Commons

   I beg to move, That the House sit in private. Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.163)

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7. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Ruth Jones

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) for her emotional contribution, and I hope baby Chloe’s mum feels that her case has been aired here today. I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for introducing the Bill. It is a really important one. Infants, parents and carers—it covers it all. He has paid tribute to all those whose work he is building on, such as Dame Andrea Leadsom, Tessa Jowell and my good friend and previous office buddy, the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). What does this Bill do? It proposes a legislative framework focused on three linked elements in infant support services: assessment of need, provision of services and reporting. We cannot get anything right until we know what is happening, so assessment is critical. As the right hon. Member for New Forest West said, it is a short Bill, but it is a high-level one. I am sure that in Committee the Bill will be gone through with a fine-toothed comb and that the Minister will have a lot to work on from it. Why 1,001 days? We have already heard clearly the evidence about the 1,001 days from conception to two years old. From my 30 years’ experience as a paediatric physiotherapist, I know just how important that period is. I could see how important the care was that the mum received during pregnancy. I have seen babies born with foetal alcohol syndrome and babies who are six hours old going through heroin withdrawal. We must not see these things again. We must do what we can to stop this, and that is why the Bill is so important. Madam Deputy Speaker, you may be asking why a Welsh MP is talking about a Bill that applies only to England, but my experience in the Welsh services, as well as the English services, showed me just how important the early days are. That is why Sure Start was so important, and in Wales we have Flying Start. We know that if a mum goes to regular antenatal checks and has the scans, things can now be picked up very early. We can actually treat children in the womb. That is fantastic news and can ensure a great start for any baby who has problems that are discovered before birth. Obviously, after birth, the use of health visitors is vital. We have already talked about home visits. It is not enough to have an online visit. Baby P was a clear example of what can go wrong. Professionals can be hoodwinked, and that is not right—we need face-to-face visits. When I was a physiotherapist, home visits told me so much about the family. By just walking through the door I could tell what level of money they had or what it smelled like. I would know what was going on in that family and intuitively how much more help they might need. We have heard clearly today about the history of the erosion of Sure Start. It is important that services are set out in statute, so that they cannot be eroded. The evidence is clear that 1 million neuropathways are set up every second, as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South said. We also know from the terrible evidence of children who have been isolated in orphanages with a lack of stimulation and the problems that they had that that ground can never be made up. That is why this Bill is so important. We need a level playing field in order to bring everybody up to a suitable level. I could go on and on, but I will not. I am proud of what has been achieved by Labour Governments in the past, but I am equally proud of what this Bill will do in the future, and I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West for bringing it forward today.

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8. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Rachael Maskell

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   Many Members were unable to contribute to today’s debate but have much to say, so will the Minister meet those Members to discuss further issues that were not raised during the debate?

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9. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Pam Cox

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   Shame!

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10. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Pam Cox

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    On the historical point—forgive me; I could not stop myself—the Maternity and Child Welfare Act 1918 probably preceded some of the things the hon. Lady is about to say, as well as some of the measures mentioned by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). There is a long history of efforts to introduce child welfare.

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11. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Pam Cox

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    My hon. Friend mentioned infrastructure. Does he agree that there is a case for redefining that term to include early years provision when we are looking at new housing developments for families?

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12. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Natasha Irons

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    The idea of ringfencing and ensuring that we protect this time is the reason why the Bill is so important. Where councils did not ringfence in the past, they kind of lumped together youth services with this period of time. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that having a separate pot and protection for this time is valuable, even if we later have to look again at youth services for people as they get a bit older?

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13. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Natasha Irons

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    My own experiences as a new parent were as my hon. Friend described: it was this terrifying thing, “How do I keep this bundle of lovely joy alive and get some sleep at the same time?” Universality is so important but, as these services have lost funding, they have become more and more targeted. One of the good things about a universal service is meeting other parents from different backgrounds and children growing up in a community rather than in silos. Does my hon. Friend agree that any way forward has to be a one-stop shop model—a drop-in service, like a stay and play, not something highly targeted and specialised? It should be the sort of thing where parents can drop in, get some support, and meet other parents who are going through the same thing.

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14. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Natasha Irons

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    To bring us back to the Bill and to take the temperature down—to be fair, nobody on the Government Benches sent it up—the point is that this particular time, the first 1,001 days, has not been protected. I agree that of course we need to take support through to 19, but the challenge when Sure Start was rolled back was that councils found themselves with one pot of funding for the journey from conception to the teenage years, which meant that the youth services that help with later intervention were competing with the early intervention we are talking about today. Protecting this time means that we can invest properly in and hopefully bring down the cost of those youth services later on. I hope the hon. Member can agree on that point.

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15. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Natasha Irons

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on the wonderful Bill he has brought forward and on the debate, and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for her tireless work on this issue. Up and down the country, it is a bittersweet time for parents. We have enjoyed spending the summer with our children, creating lasting memories, but we are also celebrating not having been asked to provide a snack for the last 10 minutes, or worrying if someone has fallen down the stairs, like in my house. In our household, we are celebrating my eldest putting on a blazer for the first time and heading off to high school—[Hon. Members: “Aww!”] Yeah, it’s a bit much. It has been an interesting time, and as we have reached this new milestone in my son’s life, I could not help but reflect, in the context of this debate, on what it was like in those early days of parenthood, because no matter how scary it is to see my son becoming his own person and having his own views on things, nothing compares to that first initial fear when you become a parent, not knowing what to do and where to go, when you are a little bit dazed, terrified and wondering if you will ever sleep again. I think back to the services I leant on: the antenatal classes, the health visitor who came to my home—we have heard how important that is—and the stay and play that I took my son to and met other parents, where we were able to swap notes. We have remained lifelong friends, and they have helped raise my son, creating that sense of community and village around him. That network meant that I had the right diet during my pregnancy, that my son was surrounded by the things that helped him to learn, and that our new family had the support we needed to get the best possible start. We often talk in this place about policy being routed not in ideology but in evidence, focusing on what works and investing in that. Well, we know what works for the early years of a child’s life because the evidence is overwhelming. The first 1,001 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday are among the most important in human development. As the Government describe in their “Best start in life” review, these critical 1,001 days are the “foundations for lifelong emotional and physical wellbeing”, as many have mentioned today. Research shows that during these critical days, a baby’s brain develops at an extraordinary rate—doubling in size during their first year, with around 1 million neuro connections forming every second. These precious days have the potential to shape our health and resilience and who we are later to become. This Bill matters so much because it protects those critical days with legislation. It requires the Government to assess need, listen to parents and carers, ensure that appropriate support services are available, and report transparently to Parliament on the impact of that support. The reality is that too many children growing up are without the services they need in those most critical moments. If those neural pathways are developing every second, then every second counts, doesn’t it? In my constituency of Croydon East, around 30% of children are growing up in poverty. Croydon’s public health data suggests that girls growing up in the most affluent parts of our borough can expect to live around six years longer than the girls growing up in the least affluent parts. For boys, that gap is nine years. In a borough like Croydon, where a child’s postcode can still have a profound impact on their health and life expectancy, we cannot afford to treat early intervention as an optional extra. It is not a luxury; it is the most effective tool we have to break the cycles of disadvantage and create genuine equality of opportunity. That is why I cannot speak on this debate today without acknowledging the impact of Sure Start, which many colleagues have mentioned. Sure Start was the most successful early intervention programme this country has ever seen. Independent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that access to Sure Start improved educational outcomes for disadvantaged children, with benefits lasting way up to their GCSEs. It found that the positive effects of Sure Start came with significant financial benefits, including reduced costs for Government services at later stages in life and increased tax revenue from higher earnings. In fact, it estimated that at its peak, Sure Start generated over £2 for every £1 of Government spending. Yet despite that evidence, funding for Sure Start fell by more than two thirds between 2010 and 2022, and over 1,000 children’s centres closed across England. I wholeheartedly welcome this Government’s commitment to giving every child the best possible start in life, for their investment in Best Start family hubs and the steps they have taken to eliminate child poverty by lifting the two-child benefit cap. But if history can teach us anything, it is that priorities change, spending changes and even Governments change, and when support at this critical time is scaled back, it is the most vulnerable who suffer. Just think about where we would be if we had kept that investment in those Sure Start centres, if they had not closed—if families, regardless of their shape, size or background, had continued to have the support and investment they needed, how much better off would we be? It is important that we do not make the same mistakes. The Bill means that for the first time, we legally give the first 1,000 days the recognition, protection and visibility that they deserve. We set out that no matter what or who is in charge, we choose to invest in our children. If we are serious about reducing inequality, improving mental and physical health, strengthening families, and giving every child the best possible start, then we must act when it matters the most: at the very beginning. I welcome the Bill and give it my full support. I am so proud to take part in this debate.

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16. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Natasha Irons

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    Anyone who has been a new mother will understand that for some women breastfeeding is very easy, and for some women it is not. Does the hon. Member agree that research into the difference between an easy breastfeeding experience and a harder one is not particularly good? If all a struggling mother wants to do is feed her baby, because she has been told that she needs to feed her baby and that if she goes below a point on a chart, she is not doing a good job, perhaps we need more investment and research into how we can make it easier for mothers to breastfeed, so that they can make informed and supported choices as they go forward.

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17. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mrs Sharon Hodgson

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    It is truly an honour to speak in this important debate. I am happy to follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). This is such an important Bill, as we have heard. I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for his work on bringing it forward; I have thoroughly enjoyed working with him on it. I also thank the 1001 Critical Days Foundation, which I have had the privilege of working with over many years, for its unwavering support for the Bill and beyond, and for its tireless commitment to ensuring that every single baby has the best possible start in life. That thanks extends, in particular, to the former Member for South Northamptonshire, Dame Andrea Leadsom. She has been the biggest champion of this issue, whether in this place during her whole time as an MP—I worked with her on it—or from the outside, as now. I also thank the wonderful former Health Minister Will Quince, who is now the chief executive of the 1001 Critical Days Foundation, for his dedication and work on getting the Bill to where it is today. We all know how much work went into these important six clauses, as we heard from the right hon. Gentleman for New Forest West in his opening remarks. Before I go into why the Bill is so important, it would be useful to contextualise how we got here—some of this we have heard in the other excellent speeches. I was extremely proud when the last Labour Government introduced Sure Start to reduce the impact of child poverty and address social exclusion by improving the life chances of children under five, especially those who grow up in disadvantaged areas. I pay enormous tribute, as others have, to the late, great Baroness Tessa Jowell. She would be so proud of the right hon. Gentleman—who is not actually listening to me at this point. She would be—he is still not listening—so proud of him for choosing this issue for his private Member’s Bill and of all of us for being here to support it. When I became shadow children and families Minister back in 2010, she explained the genesis of Sure Start, how important it was and how we got here. She said, “Sharon, you need to be able to smell the babies—the places need to be full of babies.” Metaphorically, this House is, in all our remarks, full of babies today. I am sure that she would be proud of us. I also pay huge tribute to Lord Blunkett, as others have, Baroness Margaret Hodge, who also gave me the benefit of all her wisdom and experience, and our current Health Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), as well as the former Member for Nottingham North, the amazing and brilliant Graham Allen, who I had the pleasure of working with on early intervention. I still have copies of his excellent reports, written with the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), and refer to them now; his work goes on in the work that I will continue to do from the Back Benches. I thank him for that. I also thank Naomi Eisenstadt, who has been mentioned. So many played major roles in driving the policy forward after the 1997 election.

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18. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mrs Sharon Hodgson

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    The work on teenage pregnancy was a real blueprint, and the 10-year teenage pregnancy strategy fulfilled its ambition of reducing those numbers, following the great work of Graham Allen. I remember taking part in a Westminster Hall debate acknowledging 10 years of that strategy and its success. As for what the numbers are now, as we have been saying, when anything of that kind stops, there is backsliding, I am afraid. That shows that the job is never done. That is why it is so important that we get the Bill through Parliament and on the statute book. While the initial roll-out of Sure Start targeted disadvantaged communities exclusively, the approach soon shifted to focus on the universal provision of children’s centres, as we heard in the excellent speech by the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). At Sure Start’s peak, almost 3,500 centres were operating across the country. However, in 2010 came the change in government and Tory austerity, as has been discussed; we all know what happened thereafter. Within months, Sure Start funding was slashed, with cuts of up to two thirds, and the ringfence was removed. Hundreds of centres closed so quickly. I was shadow children and families Minister at the time, and our now Prime Minister was shadow Education Secretary. Together, we fought the battle against those cuts day in, day out. I was keeping a tally of closures, and when it got to over 1,000 closures the coalition Government stopped publishing the numbers, which made it so much harder for us to keep track.

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19. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mrs Sharon Hodgson

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    It was; those were dark days. That is why I was so glad and grateful to hear the right hon. Member for New Forest West acknowledge how wrong it was that the coalition Government allowed that to happen. As we know, the former Prime Minister and then Member for Witney’s pre-election promise to protect Sure Start never held true—quite the opposite. Those savage cuts were truly a tragedy for children everywhere. I agree with the then Member for Sheffield Hallam and Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition Government, who said that Sure Start was “one of the best things the last Government” had done. It was a shame he was not able to protect it from cuts, even as Deputy Prime Minister. I am sure he tried; I acknowledge that I am sure the Lib Dems did try.

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20. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mrs Sharon Hodgson

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    That is a really good point, which gives us great hope that the Prime Minister will help to rebuild that, and protect what we are discussing, going forward.

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21. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mrs Sharon Hodgson

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I did so in my remarks just before the interventions—I said that I am sure the Lib Dems tried—but we are not here today to rehearse all that, although we are touching on it in a small way. All that is why the Bill is so important, and why it must pass today—to give vital services the statutory protection that they require, so that progress cannot ever be reversed by a future Government through austerity, cuts, neglect or indifference. The decisions we make as parliamentarians shape the support available to babies, parents and carers during the 1,001 critical days from pregnancy to age two. This is one of the most important periods in human development. This window may be relatively short, but its impact is not small; in fact, it is responsible for the fastest development of a baby’s brain when compared with other stages over the course of our whole life. I am not very good at clicking my fingers, but I am attempting to do so—I will try my other hand; that’s a bit better—because a million connections happen a second. That is what George Hosking from the WAVE Trust used to say to me. He would click his fingers and say that a million connections happen a second in a baby’s brain in those first 1,001 critical days. I know from my work with George and the WAVE Trust when I was shadow Children and Families Minister that the period from conception to age two is absolutely the age of opportunity. By age two, 80% of a baby’s brain development has happened. That lays the foundations for attachment, learning, health, wellbeing, stress responses and more. It is therefore essential that the most effective support is provided during this vital time. For babies to thrive, their parents and carers need to be supported. After all, they are directly responsible for the development of their babies during this most critical period of their lives. Their relationship, stress levels, responsive care and more will unequivocally influence the development and growth of their babies. They are therefore the foundation of our society. Evidence shows that parents’ perceptions of their foetuses are associated with the quality of the relationships built after birth. That highlights the key relationship between maternal foetal attachment and later outcomes. Getting this right matters because when we do not, children suffer. Research shows that 10% to 25% of children experience disorganised attachment with their main caregiver, putting them at greater risk of poor social, emotional and educational outcomes. That is why we need an assessment to understand exactly what parents and carers, current and prospective, need from us as legislators to help them thrive and take advantage of this time, so that they can provide the best possible start in life for their babies. But to do that, parents need the support and emotional capacity to do so. Carrying the huge responsibility of ensuring the health and wellbeing of another human being so tiny and so vulnerable is an extremely difficult journey to navigate. However, that weight does not come with any training or preparation. Parents are expected to know just by instinct how to fulfil this role, and that is where we have gone wrong. If we want a healthy and happy society, we need our children to be thriving and therefore our parents and carers to be supported from the very start. That is why I have long advocated for age-appropriate child development education, including on attachment theory and how to be a good parent, to be incorporated into the school curriculum. My hon. Friend the Minister for Early Education was here earlier, so I hope that he listens in to the point I am making now. There need to be lessons in how to form healthy attachments with babies and in the importance of someone speaking to their baby, even while pregnant, and giving them the love and care they need when they are born, consistently and constantly. This is not only an investment in their development; it is vital to ensure well-attached, healthy and happy children who will thrive into adulthood—it really is that important. This is not at all about encouraging young people to become young parents before they are ready. It is about education, in the same way that we accept that age-appropriate sex education is needed so that people are prepared for it if and when that time comes. I want to be clear that this support is just as necessary during pregnancy as it is when the child has arrived because, as we know, no two pregnancies look the same. Many will know that I have spoken before on the Floor of the House about my heartbreaking experience of baby loss, and I know that I am not alone in that. This is yet another reason why the Bill is so important. Having important support and intervention, especially in instances of grief and trauma, will be a lifeline for so many. Many of us who experience baby loss then go on to try to have another baby, sometimes successfully, so being supported through that trauma, ready for when the next baby comes along, is so important for their attachment and support. This Bill will be key in ensuring that support is not just reserved for crisis but is consistent, proactive and accountable. The current non-statutory Government guidance, which sets out delivery expectations for Best Start family hubs and healthy babies services, does not go far enough. We need legislative protection so that history can never repeat itself. It would ensure that that support is actually accountable to Parliament, with an annual mandatory report highlighting the services that have been provided and the outcomes that they have achieved. If the provision of support is there but not accountable to anyone, the quality of that support can be variable, as no one is accountable and keeping track of it. It is therefore essential that the needs of infants, parents and carers, and prospective parents and carers, are actively assessed, and that is precisely what the Bill will do. As a former public health and prevention Minister, I know from first-hand experience that Government interventions on health oftentimes focus on responding afterwards, rather than preventing, and are reactive rather than proactive. I know that the Department is very focused on changing that. If we instead focus on building conditions that allow parents, carers and babies to thrive, we allow children to thrive from the beginning, rather than waiting to intervene when they struggle later down the line. Babies should not be an afterthought. There is clearly both a moral and an economic case for this, and the cost of doing nothing will always outweigh the cost of preventive action. I would therefore encourage anyone listening to this debate to back our babies and support this Bill. Babies should be apolitical. This should never be about party politics or point scoring. This is about ensuring that investment in our babies is protected and is put on a statutory footing, so that it is not something that any future Government can decide to strip away, but rather a grounding principle of our society. Babies do not have a political voice, nor do their needs change depending on which colour the Government may be. They need consistent support and care, as do their parents, as they are reliant upon us to act for them. As I hope I have shown in my remarks today, and as we have heard from the right hon. Member for New Forest West and others, the evidence is clear and robust: supporting the healthy development of babies in their first 1,001 days is fundamental to lifelong physical and mental health and happiness. Surely the success of any Government must include a measure of how well the children in our society fare. Since we know that this key period is the ultimate determinant for that, implementing the Bill is not just an opportunity but a responsibility. That is why we said in our manifesto—I am so proud of this—that we would help raise the healthiest generation of children ever. This Bill is an important step in the journey to achieve that aspiration, which is why I was so proud when I was the Minister to secure Government support for this private Member’s Bill, and it was a pleasure to work with the right hon. Gentleman on it. I do not believe that any Member in this place would disagree with the fundamental principle that investing in our babies and supporting our parents are investments worth making. This therefore should be a uniting issue across the House, and I hope that the Bill receives the absolute and universal support it needs and deserves as it progresses through both Houses. I look forward to serving on the Committee with the right hon. Member for New Forest West, and I look forward to seeing the Bill become the Swayne babies Act very soon.

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22. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mr Connor Rand

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    It is a privilege to speak in support of the Bill today, and I commend the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on introducing it. If he will permit me to say so, he did so with his characteristic flair and passion. While I am in no way able to match his flair, I share his passion for improving the support available to babies, parents and carers, particularly during those first two years of a child’s life. Those 1,001 days are a golden opportunity. If we get the support right, the benefits last a lifetime. If we get it wrong, so do the costs. There are three points I want to make in support of the Bill. First, it sets us on the path to support every child and every parent, whoever they are and wherever they are. Secondly, and most importantly, when this level of support is not there, as is the case now, the vacuum it creates puts babies and their parents at serious risk. Thirdly, by building better support during those first 1,001 days, we are investing in the essential infrastructure needed to make this country a fairer, stronger and more prosperous place. Like many, I approach this Bill from the perspective of being a parent, which is one of the greatest joys that life has given me. I remember the first year of my son’s life and the happiness those precious early moments brought me and my partner Catherine, but I also remember distinctly the less precious moments and the daily battle that every new parent has with their anxieties: “Why are they crying? Why are they not sleeping? Am I doing something wrong?” These questions swirl around our heads when we are sleep-deprived, emotionally drained and totally unsure of ourselves. It is a time when we are at our most vulnerable, when we need help and when, as the right hon. Member for New Forest West said, parents need to have somewhere to turn. From perinatal to neonatal care, that help must be universal, it must be statutory and it must be something that the Government are held to account for delivering. This Bill sets us on the path to doing so. It is universal, in that it requires the Government to assess the needs of all babies, parents and carers; it is statutory, in that it gives a legal footing to the support provided; and it is something on which the Government can be rightly held to account, in that it requires Ministers to report annually on the support they are providing and the difference it is making. Without universal, statutory and accountable support, a vacuum is created, and that vacuum is dangerous, because in the gaps caused by the dismantling of services like Sure Start and health visitors, opportunists who are not fit to care for children and provide advice have thrived. I am talking most prominently here about the infant sleep industry—the wild west, where literally anyone can pose as an expert and give parents advice that puts their child’s life at risk. Sometimes these people call themselves nannies, sometimes maternity nurses and sometimes sleep trainers. They can provide care in the home, or they can share their advice to vast audiences on social media, but in all cases, there is no requirement for them to have any medical training or qualifications. There is no legal accountability for the advice they give and no recognised standard for the support they provide. The reason I believe this is so dangerous is, as many Members are aware, because of what happened in my constituency two years ago, when a four-month-old died after being placed in an unsafe sleeping position on the advice of a maternity nurse who had no medical qualifications. There was no criminal recourse for that. It was an unimaginable tragedy, but one that I fear is bound to repeat itself unless action is taken. To further illustrate this point, in May the BBC used undercover filming to expose two prominent individuals in the infant sleep industry who were openly giving advice to parents on safe sleep that could have resulted in the death of their children. Those figures have sold popular books on raising children and have thousands of followers online. The reason that these cowboys have such reach cannot be separated from the dismantling of Sure Start over the last decade and the fact that the number of health visitors has halved in that time. In the absence of services that used to be provided by the state—we have heard a lot from Members on both sides of the House about the importance of in-person support—vulnerable parents have understandably looked elsewhere for that support. This Bill is an important step towards rebuilding these services and giving them statutory protection both now and in the future. Backing this effort is not just a moral imperative; it is an economic and social one too, because the services that support babies and their parents are essential national infrastructure that is just as important as any other. Investing in babies and young people reaps long-term rewards. In setting solid foundations for lifelong health, brain development and emotional wellbeing, we create a better future for the individual and the society they live in. As the Royal Foundation has said, improved support for infants and the adults around them could add £45 billion to the UK economy each year.

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23. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mr Connor Rand

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    Yes, I agree that we should be thinking about the support provided to babies and parents in that way as an important component of national infrastructure; indeed, it is just as important as any other. The projected reduction in the huge costs associated with poor mental health, reliance on the care system and future criminal behaviour shows how our economy would benefit from increasing the support provided to parents and the adults around them and by creating the conditions that allow parents and carers to stay in work. However, for too long we have failed to grasp the opportunity of investing in babies and parents in those vital early years because it was treated as an afterthought and not a necessity. The Bill will set us on the path to changing that. It is a path where every baby, parent and carer has the help they need to be the best they can be. It is a path where the vacuum in support that exposes us to tragedy is filled by the services the state should always provide. It is a path where that support and those services pay for themselves by making us a stronger, fairer and more prosperous country. That is why I am proud to support the Bill.

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24. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Mr Connor Rand

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    Would my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the fact that our new Mayor of Greater Manchester, Bev Craig, has agreed to provide free bus travel for children in sheltered accommodation, which will hopefully go some way to making a difference to those children? I hope that this will be replicated in other areas across the country.

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25. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Michelle Welsh

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    For complete transparency, let me say that I am the national maternity adviser to the Government; I wanted to make that clear before I begin my remarks. I wish to place on the record my sincere gratitude and thanks to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for bringing this Bill to the House. I am genuinely delighted to speak in support of it, because its subject matter goes right to the heart of why I entered public service in the first place. There is one principle that has guided me throughout my working life: where someone is born should not determine their future. The postcode where someone is born, their parents’ income, and whether they are born in an affluent community or a former mining community, should never determine how healthy they are, how well they do at school or the opportunities they will have throughout their life. If we genuinely believe that, then we have to begin at the beginning—not at secondary school or primary school, but during pregnancy, at birth and in those first precious moments and years when so much of a child’s future is being shaped. That is why the Bill matters so much. It asks us to look seriously at the support available to babies and families, and at whether the provision we have actually meets their needs. This debate takes me back to the beginning of my career, in the heyday. Before coming to the House, I spent years working with children, young people and families, first for the YMCA in America, then back in Nottinghamshire, and then developing Sure Start services across Nottinghamshire and Derby. I worked on the frontline, directly with parents and children, and then I moved into management, helping to develop, plan and co-ordinate services for families—all based on the principles of early intervention, support and prevention. I was fortunate to work at a time when there was a real belief that children and families should sit at the centre of public policy. We not only talked about early intervention and prevention; we developed services to deliver it, bringing services together, including things like the common assessment framework. Crucially, we talked to parents, families and communities. I believed in Sure Start then and I believe in the principles behind it every bit as strongly today. Sure Start was never simply a building with a sign on it; it was an idea—a philosophy—not only about how we should treat families, but about how we give every child, no matter their background, the best possible start in life. It said that families should not have to be in crisis before somebody helps them, and that becoming a parent should not mean being handed a list of telephone numbers and then being expected to navigate half a dozen public services on your own. It recognised that a child’s life does not fit neatly into departmental boxes. There was early education and childcare, health visitors, breastfeeding support, parenting programmes, speech and language support, stay and play sessions, and family support and outreach. There was advice about benefits, employment and training. There was support for parents as well as for their children. And sometimes the most important intervention was not a formal programme at all—sometimes it was a cup of tea. In Nottinghamshire, we understand the power of a brew, because what it really means is to stop: for someone to listen, for someone to care and for someone to help. While I am not advocating for tea to necessarily be a national policy or an amendment to the Bill—nor will I ever advocate for how the Prime Minister makes a cuppa—I will always advocate for those working on the frontline having time to care, time to stop and time to listen, whether they are a support worker in a family hub, a health visitor or a midwife. Sometimes Sure Start was about a mum walking into a children’s centre, sitting down beside someone she had begun to trust and quietly saying, “Can I talk to you?” That conversation could be the beginning of getting help—that mattered. Relationships mattered and we worked with parents; I feel incredibly strongly about that. Good family policy cannot simply be designed in Whitehall and done to people. Parents know their children and their communities. They know what works and what is missing. When I worked with parents, we listened to them, we involved them, we asked them what they needed and we learned from them. We understood that the mother who did not attend a group was not necessarily hard to reach—perhaps we were hard to reach. Perhaps there was no bus, or the sessions were at the wrong time. Perhaps she was frightened of being judged. Perhaps she was exhausted.

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26. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Michelle Welsh

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    That is exactly what it was all about. When that approach began to change—and it did change—I did not want to sit on the sidelines and complain about it; I wanted to do something. That journey eventually brought me to this place. I believe the principles behind Sure Start should never be consigned to history. We should learn from them and build on them, and whatever name we put above the door today, the fundamental principle must remain services built around the child and the family. That begins before a baby is born; it begins with maternity, and through my campaign on maternity safety, and—most importantly—through listening to families, those on the frontline, charities and organisations, I have become absolutely convinced that maternity policy cannot sit in a silo, separate from children’s policy. Safe maternity care, maternal physical health and mental health, supporting fathers and parents, and making sure that women are listened to are all early years policy. We cannot talk seriously about giving every baby the best start in life without talking about the care their mothers receive. I believe we need fundamental reform. That is why one of the most central proposals I have argued for is an independent maternity commissioner—someone whose sole focus is women, babies and families, with the independence and authority to change and challenge the system. When something goes catastrophically wrong, families should not have to become investigators, they should not have to understand every layer of the NHS, and they should not have to fight organisation after organisation simply to get the truth about what happened to the woman or the baby they love. We also need better national data, proper national standards and a culture where staff can speak up. Good midwives, obstetricians, maternity support workers and other staff who raise concerns should be listened to and protected, because a safe culture is one where people can say something is wrong before another family is harmed. There is another part of maternity reform that I believe is fundamental, which is continuity of care. I want us to be much more ambitious about what we mean by continuity. I do not believe that continuity should mean a good handover from one professional to another—I believe the same person should stay. A woman should be able to build a relationship with someone throughout their maternity journey. That relationship should not simply end because her baby has been born; every woman should leave hospital following birth with a full debrief, not simple discharge paperwork. That is part of prevention. Continuity also gives us an opportunity to address the appalling inequalities we see in maternity care. The latest MBRRACE-UK data shows that black women still face nearly three times the maternal mortality risk of white women, and women living in the most deprived areas have around twice the maternal mortality rate of women in the least deprived communities. These inequalities are unacceptable, and we cannot simply publish those statistics year after year and call it action; we have to design services that actively confront inequality and discrimination. Continuity can be part of that. If somebody actually knows the woman—knows her history and her circumstances—and is responsible for staying with her, it becomes much harder for her concerns to disappear between appointments, or for her to be forced to tell her story over and over again. All of this connects directly to the wider health and development of the baby. After maternity comes health visiting, then perhaps a family hub, early years provision, nursery and eventually school. Governments see these as separate services, separate budgets, and sometimes separate Departments; a parent sees none of that. They see their child—one child, one family, one continuous journey. That is how Governments should see them, too. A health visitor may identify a developmental concern, a mother may need breastfeeding or feeding support, or parents may notice speech and language difficulties. There may be early indications of SEND, housing conditions affecting a child’s health, financial pressure or difficulty in the parents’ relationship. A mother may be experiencing depression. None of those things exists neatly on its own. The worst possible system is one that waits until a family has deteriorated sufficiently to meet a threshold for help. We should not wait for a crisis; early intervention works. If we can support the mother earlier, we should. If we can help a family earlier, we should. If we can identify a child’s need earlier, we should. If we can prevent someone from reaching crisis, we should. That is not wasteful public spending; it is intelligent public spending, and it brings us directly to education. Education can transform a person’s life. I know that personally, as I was the first person in my family to go to university. I defeated the odds, but it does not and should not have to be that way. If we are serious about closing the achievement gap, we have to be honest about when it begins. It does not suddenly appear when a child starts secondary school. For some children, inequality begins to take hold before they ever walk through the school gates. Children arrive in reception having had very different starts in life. Every child deserves the opportunity to fulfil their potential. That should be not an aspiration reserved for the lucky few; it should be a promise that we make to every child born in this country. I know the Opposition do not think that we should talk about the 1980s, but I do, because I know what happens when hope is taken away. Growing up on a council estate in Notts in the 1980s, I lived and breathed it, and now I serve those very communities, which are still up against it. I came into public service and eventually into politics because I believe that government can put hope back. That is what Sure Start represented to me. That is what safe maternity care should represent. That is what good health services, early years support and education should represent—not charity or a favour, but opportunity: the opportunity for a mother to be safe and heard, the opportunity for a family to be supported before they reach crisis, the opportunity for a baby to be given the very best start in life, and the opportunity for every child, whatever street they are born in and whatever their parents earn, to look at their future and believe it belongs to them. Ultimately, that is the test of everything we do here—not whether we can write another strategy or create another pathway, but whether the child born tonight in the poorest household in the country has the same right to dream, to thrive and to succeed as the child born into the richest. Where someone is born should never determine their future, but what we choose to do in this House can.

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27. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Maya Ellis

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I am delighted to wholeheartedly support the private Member’s Bill of the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), which pushes for vital provision to support infants and families, and would finally put into legislation the requirement for the Government to report to Parliament annually on how this country supports children and families from pregnancy to age two. I am very proud to be the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on babies (pregnancy to age two). Over the past two years, I have seen through that role that the evidence on this subject is there a hundred times over. We know that there are 3.5 million children under the age of four, all of whom will grow into UK citizens whom we need to thrive. We know that some of the most significant brain development happens before the age of two. We know that Sure Start centres were directly linked to a reduction in special educational needs. We know that the Department of Health’s own research says that early intervention could save £45 billion a year. As I always say, though, to many of the people in this sector and to my own constituents, even though the evidence is there a million times over, sometimes getting the political will is even harder. That is why I think we are in a really lucky position right now: 41% of MPs are women, and I am really glad that feminism has developed to a point where this is finally coming before the House. We also have the maternity taskforce, for which I am proud to be a member of the parliamentary expert advisory panel. I think we have a moment now where these things are coming together, and finally there is the political will and momentum. Women particularly are finding their voice, alongside all the incredible dads, and parents and carers across households, who are really standing up, but we have to keep shouting about this. I am delighted that the Bill finally puts the first steps into legislation, but it is important that we build on it. One of the powerful arguments for the Bill is that no Government would now question the funding for free entitlement to schooling at age five. No Government would change that. I think this is about putting the same assumptions on to care from pregnancy and birth, and making sure that no future Government could change those basic principles, with which I think we all now agree, without a lot of difficulty. I want to pay a few tributes to those who have got us to this point, because there are people who have been banging the drum on this issue for decades. Dame Tessa Jowell, who has already been mentioned, along with Lord David Blunkett and Naomi Eisenstadt, who was the civil servant who led on Sure Start, all put so much of the framework in place. Lord Frank Field, who went on to develop partnerships during the Cameron Government, was an incredible force in this space. Dame Andrea Leadsom has worked really hard to bring the Bill forward and made sure family hubs continued under previous Governments. And most recently, this Government, driven in particular by our hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), are bringing in Best Start family hubs to really start to rebuild the Sure Start legacy. I also want to pay tribute to the wonderful Nicholas Peacey MBE, who passed away this summer after a lifetime of work with young people, which included leading the Foundation Years Information and Research charity, which I am honoured to chair. Nick was relentless in his positive support for early years and for stakeholders like myself, with a conviction that nothing was more important than babies. I believe he knew that the Bill was coming through Parliament, but there was so much more that he was excited to do and we will miss him. The Bill is deliberately simple. Organisations have lobbied me, and I am sure others, about the fact that they wish it did more. I have been very grateful to Dame Andrea Leadsom and the wonderful Will Quince for educating me on how important it is to keep a Bill simple. It is important that the public know that this Bill is about creating a basis and making sure something gets through and on to the statute book, but it is absolutely only a start and we will all in this House, I am sure, be committed to building on it. The Bill will serve as a foundation. If it becomes law, there are a few things the Government could do to ensure a glowing first report. Too often, mothers, babies and parents are treated as an afterthought in policymaking. The Bill recognises a simple truth: if we want healthier families, greater equality and better outcomes for children, we have to pay more attention to the early stages of life. Maternity care is one of those areas that currently gets shamefully low focus. Around 84% of women will become mothers, and maternity care is often the first time a healthy adult really interacts with a publicly funded institution. Her experience and the experience of her family around her of what her taxes have been paying for is currently woeful. The state of maternity care should concern every one of us. The Care Quality Commission found that 65% of inspected maternity units required improvement or were inadequate for safety. The fact that two thirds of maternity services have been rated unsafe should be treated as a national emergency. The consequences are not felt equally either. Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy or in the year after birth than white women. Babies born in the most deprived parts of our country are more than twice as likely to die around the time of birth than those born in the least-deprived areas. We have had more than 700 recommendations on maternity care over the past decade. We do not need another list of recommendations; we need investment in staff, workforce stability, continuity of care and time for professionals to build trusting relationships with women and families. How women experience pregnancy and birth is not a nice to have; it has profound consequences for mental health, family wellbeing and long-term outcomes. Women deserve to feel safe, listened to and empowered through pregnancy and childbirth, and as they take their first steps in feeding and caring for their baby. The Bill is also about what happens after birth. We know that the first 1,001 days of a child’s life are among the most important in determining future outcomes, yet they receive remarkably little attention. Currently, only around 55% of infants develop secure attachments, despite overwhelming evidence that early relationships shape future health, wellbeing and life chances. Recent research has shown that expanding parent-infant relationship support in the most deprived communities could save the Government £1.2 billion annually. The Bill also speaks to a challenge that sits at the heart of gender inequality. Becoming a parent remains one of the biggest drivers of inequality between men and women. Mothers still carry a disproportionate share of caring responsibilities and the result is the motherhood penalty: lower earnings, reduced career progression and less financial security for many women. Evidence shows that when fathers take meaningful leave in a child’s life, mothers are more likely to return to work, more likely to progress in their careers and more likely to share caring responsibilities on a lasting basis. Many of us here are campaigning for the Government’s parental leave review, which concludes in December, to fund six weeks of paternity leave paid at 90% of pay. As a mother to two young children, I have seen at first hand among my peers, alongside all the overwhelming evidence, the life-changing difference it makes to a child’s early years, and to equality, when parents are enabled to take equal responsibility from the very start. For me, the Bill is a foundation not just for how we support babies, but for how we support families to support their babies, because it is families who are at the coal face, families who get up in the night, who do not get to clock-off, and families who get the criticism when things go less well with their children. I would like to make a point in support of targeted universalism, as some of my colleagues have made, with early years support. It feels like it strays outside my political home in some ways, but not in others. The Labour movement was founded in working-class families and ensuring opportunity for all, but the movement has been upheld and sustained by other groups, particularly feminists—and feminists of all backgrounds. While we must ensure that financial disadvantage does not become a barrier—and I will always defend that as the first goal of a Labour Government—we cannot ignore the strain that women from all backgrounds are under with caring responsibilities, especially at the earliest stages of a child’s life. I wanted to be a politician because I have felt for the last 20 years how relentlessly hard it is for women, even from a more supported background, to do everything expected of them. We need earlier services for all women—for all families—because currently even wealthier women hold a hugely disproportionate amount of the responsibility for physical caring and the mental load of working out what is the right thing to do for their child. We need to support those women, because it is against our Labour values to still be enabling such inequality of care. We also need to support them because it is often those women—if they have the right support and balance, equality with their partner, and confidence in the balance they establish between work and family—who get to stand up in this place and fight for everyone else. Most women I know do not think they could be in this place because of the things they would have to juggle. The Bill does not just enable healthy babies; it enables the systems for women to thrive. I have been incredibly lucky to have a largely positive journey with my two gorgeous children, but it should not be luck that made that happen, and it should not be luck that enabled me to stand in this place because of that equality. The Bill recognises something that every parent knows: raising children is not a private issue to be solved behind closed doors; it is a public good. When we support parents, we support children’s development, strengthen families, improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities. Unlike what most economic theory would have us believe, human capital does not just appear like magic at age 18; endless unseen effort goes into creating those productive, mentally healthy members of society. The Infants, Parents and Carers Bill asks us to take those realities seriously. It asks us to invest earlier, think longer term and put parents, babies and carers at the centre of policy rather than taking them for granted. For those reasons, I am frankly emotional that this Bill might actually become legislation, and I am beyond delighted to support it.

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28. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Maya Ellis

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    As much as we know the damage that screentime can do, a good majority of parents use screens not because they think that that is the best thing for their child; they are often used as childcare or as a way to get the tea made. Does the hon. Member agree that it will be critical for this Government to research why parents rely so much on screentime, and how we can support parents not to have to do so?

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29. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Laura Kyrke-Smith

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    This is such an important Bill, and I am pleased to support it. He is not in his place, but I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for bringing it forward. What a credit it will be to him if the Bill proceeds. We would also not be here without the work of Dame Andrea Leadsom and all the team at the 1001 Critical Days Foundation, and I put on record my thanks and appreciation to them. I also take the opportunity to wish the most important baby in my life, my little niece Hallie, a very happy first birthday which is coming up next week. The Bill does vital work putting into law the requirement to ensure that infants, parents, carers and prospective parents receive the support that they need at this vital time in life: the start of a baby’s life. We have heard many examples of how this would be transformative for the babies and families who lie at the heart of the Bill, and rightly so, because evidence is compelling that the care that a baby receives in those first 1,001 days from pregnancy to aged two, when those vital neural connections are forming in their brains, can affect their life chances in so many ways, from education to health to earnings potential. My contribution will focus not on the babies, but on their parents and carers, specifically pregnant and new mums and their partners, and the mental health challenges that they can face at this time of life. I believe the Bill will improve the support available to them. However, babies and their parents are connected, of course, because we cannot separate a baby’s wellbeing from the wellbeing of those caring for them. When parents are struggling with their mental health, the effects can be felt throughout the family. As compelling evidence from the Maternal Mental Health Alliance and others shows, perinatal mental illness is associated with increased risk of poor emotional, intellectual, social and physical development in children. It can disrupt attachment and bonding during the period when secure relationships are laying the foundations for a child’s future health and wellbeing, but when parents and carers are supported, and when babies experience that secure attachment as a result, babies go on to thrive. Perinatal mental health is an issue close to my heart, as I have said in the Chamber before. I lost my close friend Sophie to suicide after the birth of her third daughter, when her little girl was just 10 weeks old. I have introduced my own Bill to stop more people suffering in the way that she did. My Bill would require that every pregnant and new mum has a mental health check-in, and I am continuing to push that forward. No matter how many times I speak about it, the sadness and shock of losing Sophie does not lessen, because she struggled more than anyone should have to at that time of life, but too many people are still struggling in the way that she did. For many families, a new baby is time for excitement and joy, and I am so glad when that is the case, but for many others, it is time that can be marked by anxiety, depression, trauma, isolation and, in some cases, severe mental illness. Across the UK, about one in four women experience a mental health challenge during that time. That means that families in every community and every constituency are living with the realities of perinatal mental illness. This can include post-natal depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and, in some cases, severe illnesses, such as post-partum psychosis. These challenges can affect first-time parents, as well as experienced parents—for Sophie, it was her third time as a new mum. They can come quite unexpectedly, including for those with no history of severe mental illness. We have spoken about how babies’ brains are forming in those 1,001 days, but a lot is happening for a mum at that point too. There is a brilliant book by Lucy Jones called “Matrescence”, which I recommend to everyone. It sets out the profound hormonal, neural and cognitive changes that occur during motherhood, which have consequences for people’s sense of identity and self in much the same way as happens to teenagers during adolescence. There have been some brilliant advocates for the idea of matrescence, including Maggie Gordon-Walker, who I want to acknowledge. All of that creates challenges to mental health, which can have incredibly serious consequences. There is a great report by MBRRACE-UK—Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK—called “Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care” that shows that suicide remains the leading cause of death among women between six weeks and year after birth. That is a life lost, but it is also a family broken. That is the shocking and sobering reality of families not getting the recognition, understanding and support that they need at this time. That has consequences, not just for the people at the heart of the situation, but way beyond that, for the economy and society. The London School of Economics estimates the long-term cost of untreated perinatal mental health problems to be about £8.1 billion every year. Significantly, about three quarters of that cost—72%—arises from the long-term impact on the children’s ability to learn, earn, be healthy and care for themselves later in life. Correcting all that has to start with raising awareness. Despite a lot of great advocacy and awareness-raising work from many organisations, including the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, Jo Cruse at Delivering Better, and the Hearts and Minds Partnership, we still recognise and understand perinatal mental health poorly. As a result, people continue to suffer in silence. They are afraid of being judged and fear that admitting that they are struggling could somehow be seen as a failure, or they might recognise that something is not right but they simply do not know where to turn for help. Awareness alone is not enough; we need support too, and that is where the Bill comes in. I will touch briefly on four ways that it could make a real difference. First, the principle behind it is that everyone in England—regardless of who they are, where they are from and what their background is—is equally deserving of support at that time in life in the eyes of the law. The reality today is that not all pregnant and new mums get the same support. The evidence shows that mums from black and minority ethnic communities face much poorer outcomes and greater barriers to accessing care. Younger mothers, families in poverty and deprivation, and those living with the effects of domestic abuse or other past trauma encounter additional obstacles and worse outcomes, and that is simply not acceptable. The aim of the Bill is to enable every family to access high-quality support. That important principle is supported by many experts, including the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The second important point about the Bill is the period that it focuses on. For someone struggling with their mental health, it is vital that the support kicks in at the very early stages of the 1,001 days. As others have said, the systems too often kick in when people are at crisis point, but for support to be effective it has to kick in early. It is about identifying the vulnerability early; building trusted relationships with the midwives, GPs and health visitors providing care; providing continuity of care; and ensuring that mums feel seen, heard and supported long before the difficulties become overwhelming. There must be the possibility of being referred to specialist services if necessary. Once the baby gets to the age of two, it can be too late. They have already formed their early understanding of the world, and the family has had to get through that really tough first phase, so that time period is critical. Thirdly, it is absolutely right that the Bill extends the statutory support in a wide-ranging way across infants, parents and carers. It is not enough to focus on just one member or one part of the family. On mental health, my speech has obviously focused on pregnant and new mums, but it is equally vital to consider the needs of fathers, partners and other carers at that time. There was a very worrying Samaritans study from Wales recently, which showed for the first time, in an evidence-based way, the really high rates of suicide among new dads and the many barriers to support that they face. That should compel us to act. There are good examples out there of good support to dads. I was talking to the mental health midwives at my local hospital, Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury, and they use something called the DadPad, which has a book that comes alongside it. It has easily accessible information and advice about how dads can look after themselves and give their child the best start in life. That good advice is out there, but it is not routinely available, so I see the potential of the Bill ensuring that everyone who needs that guidance can access it. Fourthly, it is right that the nature of the support in the Bill is very broadly defined. It is obviously for the Government to work further on. A model of broad, cross-cutting, joined-up support is embedded in the Government’s Best Start family hubs programme. I am proud that they have introduced it and are driving it forward. It is already benefiting my constituents, and the Best Start family hub Elmhurst is opening this month. With those mental health teams, infant feeding support teams, SEND support teams, maternity care, primary care, health visitors and the voluntary sector all co-located in one place, families will be able to access the joined-up support that they need, whatever that might be. There is also such an important opportunity for the voluntary sector to dock in with other services on offer from the local authority and the NHS. Often, that sector is overlooked in these debates, but if we did not have such brilliant active voluntary and community organisations across our constituencies, a lot more women and families would fall through the cracks.

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30. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Laura Kyrke-Smith

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I agree, and my hon. Friend makes an important point. We see these pockets of good practice across the country, but too often they are not flagged up through the system. Certainly, we in this House do not become aware of them. Part of the potential of the Bill is that, through those reporting mechanisms, we will get a better sense of what works and what does not, with the potential to roll that out and scale it up. I pay tribute to the brilliant PANDAS group in my constituency, which offers tea and coffee, and toys for the kids, but is also a really supportive space for new mums to meet other mums who may also be struggling. There are such organisations across the country—Mothers for Mothers in Bristol does fantastic work along those lines. I went to a wonderful session by Breathe Melodies, which works across London to harness the power of community and singing to bring mums—and dads now—together and to provide that support. Sport in Mind is more about getting people out and walking, and also talking. There are fantastic voluntary groups, and we need to think about plugging them into the support that would be provided through the Bill. As others have said powerfully, a baby cannot tell us when they are struggling or when their family is struggling. They cannot navigate a complex and fragmented healthcare system or advocate for improved services. A baby relies on us, as legislators, to ensure that that support exists. That is why the Bill is so important. My ask as we consider this legislation is that we recognise that supporting perinatal mental health and, more broadly, the mental health of parents and carers, is fundamental to that ambition and such a key determinant of whether the infants, parents and carers at the heart of the Bill go on to thrive.

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31. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Katrina Murray

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    On that point, will the Minister give way?

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32. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·John Grady

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I start by paying tribute to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), who has served our family of nations in many different ways with real distinction. Ensuring that we are here discussing how we make sure that our society treats every baby with compassion and love and provides them with safety is his finest achievement. I welcome the fact that so many Members have come along to signal to our family of nations that this is such an important topic. As a Labour Member of Parliament, I am immensely proud of my favourite policy of the 1997 to 2010 Government: Sure Start. Being an MP and able to change laws is something precious, and being a Government MP—a Labour Government MP—is immensely precious to me I find it helpful, as a recovering lawyer, to road-test drafting against real-life examples of what might happen, and what we are seeking to do. One must ask, will this Bill work in the real world? I say it will. I have assessed the Bill against the serious safeguarding issues raised in the Glasgow Child Protection Committee’s learning review about Family C. The report pointed to catastrophic failures in the care of four babies and children in my home city. The neglect and abuse of the children was catastrophic, and the system that was meant to protect them did not do so. Against that, I turn to the first duty in the Bill, which is a duty on, and a power for, the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the services that are relevant to good outcomes for babies. The Family C case points to an important issue when the Secretary of State comes to exercise her discretion: what services should be covered? That will need very careful thought. Consider homelessness services. The report shows that there were 12 occasions when housing and homelessness services came into contact with the family, and could have had the opportunity to identify and report risk factors. That did not happen. Another example of the sort of services that the Secretary of State will need to grapple with are health and dentistry services. This example occurred in 2010, when child A was three and child B was less than four months old: “In February, Child A was diagnosed with a squint and referred…but was not brought to the appointment. Child B was diagnosed with a small heart defect. By April he had missed three outpatient cardiology appointments.” For today’s purpose, that points to the importance of the careful exercise of the power in the Bill so that all relevant services for babies are captured. I also applaud the Bill for another reason: it signals to those involved in the care of children how important the care of babies is. It is Parliament speaking to the professionals involved. The Bill also provides for a duty on the Secretary of State to consult parents, carers and prospective parents and carers when making the assessment of the level of need of services, and to take those views into account. For all the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), that is a very important requirement; however, I am anxious about one point. I appreciate that it is not possible to consult with babies, but while adults have a voice expressly specified in the statutory framework, babies and children do not have a voice in the Bill. Related to that is a central principle underpinning child protection law: that the law should act, and we should act, in the best interests of the welfare of a baby or child. The Children Act 1989, in relation to England and Wales, explains that when a court is considering these matters, “the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.” The analogous Children (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that “the welfare of that child throughout his childhood shall be…its paramount consideration.” It naturally follows from the use of the word “paramount” that the child’s interests must be prioritised over those of any adults in the child’s life. A potential response to what I say is that all this is obvious, but even though it is obvious to all of us here, it is not always acted on—children are not listened to. A lesson from the learning review is that the staff in Glasgow did not ensure that they were listening to the children, and observing what the children were saying through not only their words. The learning review explains: “Indicators of distress, like headbanging and deliberately seeking eye contact with professionals were not considered”, and the children’s welfare was not considered paramount. When there was a conflict between the welfare of the children and what the adults were saying, the babies’ welfare was not prioritised. On page 28, we read: “Overall, professionals accepted the parents’ view of the children’s behaviours as being ‘challenging’. When staff raised concerns about the children’s care with the parents, they would effectively shift the issue to what it meant for themselves. Child A’s behaviour was generally described by staff from the parents’ perspective i.e. that her behaviour was “challenging”. I gently suggest that serious thought is given to ensuring that the operation of the Bill, and perhaps even the drafting, gives greater weight to the interests of babies and some sort of mechanism to give babies a voice in the assessment and the Bill’s process. I now wish to make some brief remarks on duty four. This is another important provision in the Bill and it requires the Secretary of State to assess an appropriate level of provision. I believe that that is critical in Scotland as well, and I hope the Scottish Government look at the Bill and consider whether something similar should be introduced in Scotland. What this very sensible provision calls for is an assessment not just of the number of social workers or the amount of money spent, but of the quality of the services—whether there are sufficient senior social workers, and so on. In that regard, one of the many questions left unanswered by the learning review is whether the overall level of service provision in Glasgow is adequate. The learning review does not address that, but it is a very important question, because what happened to those babies really points to a lack of appropriate resources. Child A was born in 2007 to an adult mother who had serious substance misuse problems. She was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome and as a result of that was placed on the child protection register. Despite that, there was no adequate scrutiny of the adults involved in the child’s life. No qualified social worker was allocated to child A—a baby at the time—from February 2008 to October 2009, when adult E was pregnant with child B. That was despite very many serious issues being identified. This is the important point about the Bill: it calls for an assessment about whether we are putting adequate resources into the safeguarding of babies. It is an essential question that must be answered in Scotland, too. The Bill is incredibly important. It forces this House—because it will result in reports being laid in this House and in the other place—to grapple with whether we are doing everything possible to give babies and young children the best possible start in life. It is underpinned by a critical point that I think each and every person in this House today shares: that our youngest children must be treated with love, compassion and safety. I have concerns and their voices should not be dismissed. For that reason, I am delighted to support the Bill.

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33. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Jess Asato

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I also hugely thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for bringing forward such an important and necessary Bill, which has my wholehearted support. I declare my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for children and as a member of the parliamentary advisory group for the 1001 Critical Days Foundation. I also proudly declare that, a decade and a half ago, I worked for Dame Tessa Jowell, who pioneered the transformational Sure Start programme that the spirit of the Bill echoes back to. When announcing the first Sure Start trailblazers in this very place, she said that we are not prepared to allow children’s opportunities to be set on the day that they are born. The nature of parental influence on babies was brought up with me recently, when my daughter stayed with a family friend, and on her return said, “Mum, she taught me a brilliant poem by a guy called Larkin.” It goes: “They”— mess— “you up, your mum and dad, They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.” As shocked as I was at hearing her use the vernacular, I was delighted that she had discovered Larkin, as “This Be the Verse” was also a favourite of mine as a teenager, but I know more now than I did when I was a teenager. We now have the brilliant research and evidence that shows that with support, parents can bond and love their babies. Breaking the stranglehold of intergenerational trauma is possible. There was a huge wealth of evidence that sat behind the need for Sure Start, so it was devastating to see that by the time I was having children, the strong political consensus built by the late 2000s around the value of investing in the early years had become undone. It is, after all, easy to make cuts to services supporting babies, given that they neither have a voice or a vote. It is also heartbreaking that the most recent evidence by the IFS, quoted today, shows that children who attended Sure Start had higher educational attainment, particularly those from the most-disadvantaged backgrounds. That was exactly the ambition and what underpinned the introduction of Sure Start by Tessa, David Blunkett and others, only to come to fruition after the whole programme had had the rug pulled from under it. However, I think Tessa would be delighted to see, through this Bill, the reforging of that cross-party consensus on the issue of support for babies and their parents. For that I thank Dame Andrea Leadsom, who co-chaired the 1,001 days all-party parliamentary group with Tessa, for her work on making the Bill a reality, and carrying the love for the smell of babies—which they regularly discussed in Tessa’s office—into her programme of work at the Department of Health and Social Care, alongside former Minister Will Quince. I also thank Jess Mills, Tessa’s daughter, and her organisation Start Strong, through which Tessa’s legacy lives on. It is our duty to not just to Tessa’s memory, but the lives of babies and parents across the country facing the stark inequalities at the start of life, to embed the principles behind the Bill in legislation, so that they can stand the test of time. I have a particular interest in safeguarding, and given that babies under the age of one account for a third of serious safeguarding reviews, and around three fifths of child deaths reviewed nationally, any Bill that makes babies more visible to multiple services is incredibly welcome. It is a stain on our idea of equality that so many babies in this country begin life already at a disadvantage, that babies in the top 10% most-deprived areas are more than twice as likely to die as those in the 10% least deprived, and that almost a third of parents cannot afford to provide balanced meals. The Bill will only succeed if it makes that scandal of inequality an issue that no future Government can simply ignore. It must be strong enough to hold successive Governments’ feet to the fire. For that to happen, the Bill must have the teeth to achieve it. I am slightly concerned that the strength of the accountability process set out by the Bill is undermined by the ability of any Secretary of State being held to account by it to define the scope against which they are assessed. To me, that is not strong enough. I would like to see in the Bill the specific outcomes that Governments must improve for babies and young children. There is precedent for that. The Childcare Act 2006, which helped establish the framework for Sure Start children’s centres, placed a duty on English local authorities to not only improve the wellbeing of children in their area but, crucially, reduce inequalities between young children across a number of named outcomes, including physical and mental health and emotional wellbeing. If we want successive Governments to work to improve outcomes for our babies, that requires us to be bold enough to say so in primary legislation. If we could place that duty on local government 20 years ago, surely we can ask the same of our national Government today. It is, of course, heartening to see the investment that the Government are providing and that they are rolling out more Best Start family hubs. I recently visited Kirkley Best Start family hub in Lowestoft to see its perinatal mental health support in action. While there, we met a mother who experienced a mental health crisis and found it difficult to bond with her baby. With support from the mental health worker, she and her husband were slowly able to build those blocks. When I met them, she said that things were still hard but she was able to love her baby, now a curious toddler, and she called her worker her rock. Relationships are the key. This is not just a service or intervention, but the very best of what Tessa would call the “relational state”. Perhaps man may not need to hand misery on to man, and this Bill can play its part in that.

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34. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on coming top in the private Members’ Bill ballot and on his choice of Bill. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for her work to champion the needs of very young children and their families over many, many years. I thank the 1001 Critical Days Foundation for its work on the Bill. Its research so clearly demonstrates how critical the first 1,001 days—the stage from conception to the age of two—are for child development and the unique opportunity they offer to set every baby on a solid foundation for the rest of their life. There is a sign outside the wonderful Sheringham nursery and children’s centre in east London that captures the importance of the first 1,001 days perfectly: it reads “Building brains here.” During the first 1,001 days, babies’ brains develop at the most astonishing rate, forming over 1 million neural connections every minute and reaching 80% of their adult size by the age of two. The right support during this vital phase of development can bear fruit for a lifetime in terms of good emotional regulation, learning capacity, language and communication skills, and physical health. Conversely, without the right inputs in early childhood, the impacts of disadvantage can become embedded for a lifetime. Good support in the first 1,001 days involves a wide range of people. It means family, of course, but also midwives, health visitors, GPs, parenting support, breastfeeding and weaning support, and perinatal mental health care. It can also involve special educational needs and disabilities specialists, and, sadly, sometimes those in safeguarding and social services. This network of people involved in providing support for babies, parents and carers during the first two years gives meaning to the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child.”

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35. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    My hon. Friend is right. I mentioned the need for early access to SEND support, and I would include audiology in that category. Those services are vital, as are speech and language services, which we know are all too often not available at the earliest possible opportunity. In a moment, I will speak about the importance of that very early intervention. That network is the village, and the village should be available in every community for every family, right across the country, every single week of the year. One of the proudest achievements of the Labour Governments of 1997 to 2010 was the creation of Sure Start—a children’s centre in every community, bringing together a range of universal services for pregnant women, new parents and carers, and children under a single roof in local neighbourhoods. I once again pay tribute to my predecessor, Dame Tessa Jowell, for her pioneering work to establish Sure Start right across the country. The results of Sure Start were transformative, with long-term evaluations showing that integrated early childhood interventions significantly improved long-term health, especially for disadvantaged children; reduced hospital admissions; and improved GCSE results. The analysis also showed that investment in those services represented exceptional value for money and a positive financial return, with every pound spent on Sure Start delivering more than twice as much back in societal benefits. My own daughters were born in 2005 and 2008, and we experienced at first hand the benefits of that investment in the form of antenatal and early childhood support. It provided a gold standard in community midwifery services, excellent health visitors, good breastfeeding support, a drop-in speech and language therapy clinic when one of my daughters needed that, and a wealth of other services. All of this was delivered a very short distance from home in our local community, so we also got to meet other parents and babies at the same stage and to build relationships with them.

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36. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    Later in my speech, I will make exactly that point about the importance of these services being available on a universal basis, for the reasons my hon. Friend alludes to. It was a tragedy that Sure Start centres were one of the earliest and most extensive casualties of the austerity of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government of 2010. The funding was not ringfenced; in many cases, the services were not statutory; and the integrated service design model was not mandated. In many ways, the strongest argument for the Bill we are debating today is the experience of just how easy it was for Sure Start to be dismantled, ultimately resulting in the closure of 1,300 centres and the loss of that precious and vital integrated network of support for babies and their families, which had been delivering so much. Those closures were compounded by the covid-19 pandemic, when access to face-to-face services in early childhood was very limited. We have seen the impact of that, particularly the increase in the number of children with speech, language and communication difficulties coming through the system in recent years.

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37. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I agree with the right hon. Member about the importance of face-to-face services. I mentioned the excellent community midwifery services that I was able to benefit from as a new mother. We have got ourselves into a terrible state with maternity care right across the country, with tragedies and a real challenge in turning those services around. One of the things I found so important and appreciated so much about that community midwifery service was that during the course of my pregnancies, I got to know the team of five midwives who worked in that service. One of those midwives took me through labour and the antenatal period. That was so important for building the trust that, in midwifery and maternity services in particular, has been badly damaged by service failures in lots of areas of the country. My second daughter has two middle names, one of which is Agnes. Agnes is the midwife who delivered both my babies through that excellent community midwifery service, about which I cannot speak highly enough. Those services have now largely gone; midwifery services are not delivered in that way anymore. On the delivery of online services, parents and carers—all of us—look for advice online all the time, so it is important that there are accredited, reliable, trustworthy sources of good information online. I do not dismiss the role of online services, but they cannot ever be a substitute for the delivery of in-person services. As our Labour Government seek to restore some of the provision that was lost as Sure Start was dismantled, and to respond to the challenges that families face by expanding Best Start family hubs, there are some vital considerations. The first, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) alluded to, is the principle of universality. None of us comes to parenthood for the first time knowing everything about what is best for our baby. For many new parents, irrespective of material resources, the experience is overwhelming. It is an incredibly vulnerable time of life: 10% to 15% of new mothers experience post-partum depression. We should therefore ensure that all new parents can access support and advice in the earliest years, and that it is easily accessible for everyone in their local communities. If support was delivered in that way, there would be no stigma associated with accessing it, and there would be the added benefit of helping to build community cohesion by giving parents from different backgrounds living in the same area an opportunity to connect with each other.

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38. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I agree with everything that my hon. Friend says. The role of fathers is so important, and they must have the opportunity to connect with each other and share their experiences. I will later talk about some powerful work on reading that involves fathers. Parenting support should be presented as something that absolutely everybody needs, not as something that people need only if they have a problem, because that is where the stigma creeps in. As well as making these services as normal as possible, we need to make them as accessible as possible. My hon. Friend also makes some important points about paternity leave.

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39. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    I agree with everything that my hon. Friend says. It is important that Best Start family hubs are, like Sure Start centres, anchor institutions—anchor places in local communities—as well as places where individual services are delivered; then the whole will be more than the sum of its parts. The second principle I want to mention is the importance of the availability of SEND expertise in early years settings. The earlier that a special educational need or disability is identified, the sooner that appropriate support can be put in place. Early identification also enables parents and carers to understand their child’s needs and provide the support they need as they grow. Early intervention is not only the best for the child and the family, but much more cost-effective for the public purse. I therefore strongly welcome the Government’s commitment to put SEND specialists in every Best Start family hub. The third principle is the opportunity to participate in a range of activities together. My Committee recently published a report on reading for pleasure, which delivers such significant benefits for children’s development, educational attainment, empathy and mental health and wellbeing. Reading for pleasure should start as early as possible in a child’s life, with parents and carers reading to their babies. My Committee recommended a national reading guarantee that will embed opportunities to read for pleasure throughout every child’s life, from birth to the age of 18. This should start in Best Start family hubs. I pay tribute to the brilliant work of BookTrust and former Waterstones children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce in this area. They have modelled inclusive approaches to early years reading that engage and build the confidence of parents and carers, who themselves had negative experiences of reading at school and lack the confidence to read with their own children, by making reading together a fun and joyous experience for everyone. We heard some wonderful testimony about groups who do this work with fathers, grandparents, parents and carers, building the confidence back to do something that delivers such benefits both for children and for parents.

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40. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Labour·Helen Hayes

    Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We take a broad definition of reading in the report, including audiobooks, because this is about the stories and the connection. Any way that gets children and young people engaged in that is important. Frank Cottrell-Boyce makes the point so well that reading with babies often means books that do not have any words in them at all—it is about the pictures, the story and the engagement.

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