Dr Danny Chambers

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I commend the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) for securing this hugely important debate and speaking so eloquently about her friend. As someone who has lost a close friend to suicide, I completely agree that they are not defined by their death, but by the impact they had during their life and the impact they had on other people. Suicide is the leading cause of death among women in the six weeks to 12 months after giving birth, and maternal mental health in Winchester and across the UK is in crisis. As the Lib Dem spokesperson for mental health, I am hearing more and more stories about this from individual women. Every year, 600,000 women give birth, and one in five of those women will experience a perinatal mental health condition. This is a completely neglected mental health crisis, on an extremely large scale. Polling from as recently as December 2024, commissioned by the campaign Delivering Better, representatives of which I am pleased are in the Public Gallery today, found that seven out of 10 women who have a negative birthing experience say that it has had a long-term impact on their mental health. A recurring theme is that women are not being listened to—that has been a theme in essentially every major maternity inquiry. Women are not listened to when they raise concerns pre, during and post labour, not listened to when they raise complaints with trusts about their care, and not listened to by successive Governments who have failed to treat this issue with the seriousness it demands. If this crisis is to be meaningfully addressed, far greater emphasis needs to be placed on the voices and experience of women and birthing people.