Lizzi Collinge

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I want to speak about transparency and accountability in healthcare, and about my constituents Ryan and Sarah, and their daughter Ida. Ida died in 2019 at seven days old. She died from brain damage caused by failings in her care. Those failings could have been avoided. There were eight missed opportunities to save Ida, and in the wake of her death, Ryan and Sarah have had to fight every step of the way to get the truth. After the hospital trust’s completely inadequate internal investigation declared that there were no issues with Ida’s care, her death was graded as “moderate harm”. Ryan and Sarah had to contact a senior coroner to request a full inquest, and only during that inquest this year—six years later—did the trust finally accept its failings. That is five and a half years in which Ryan and Sarah have had to fight for the truth; five and a half years in which the trust not only denied its failings, but covered them up. For truly safe healthcare we must strengthen the ability of staff to speak up and speak out safely. People need to be thanked for raising concerns. But when problems are covered up, there needs to be accountability. For Ryan and Sarah, the grief of Ida’s death was made even harder by the denial and cover-up that followed.