Stuart Anderson

The hon. Member makes an excellent point. I agree 100%, but it is not always a single significant point. I lost my dad at eight, and I was shot at 17 in the military. For me, it was a culmination of different things. I have spoken openly about how I ended up with post-traumatic stress disorder, with all those different things, and spent 15 years living a nightmare, wanting to take my own life. All those things had built up, but if we deal with children’s mental health earlier—it is really hard to deal with—there is a way to come through. The way to do that is to grieve at the time, and to talk and discuss it. I do not think that the weight of that should just fall on the parents. The school should support and work with them, because the children are at school for a long time. It is not just me, John and others who have commented on this. This goes across South Shropshire—the old constituency was Ludlow—as we have almost 2,000 signatures, so I know how important this is locally, and all the credit goes to John, who has been raising awareness of the issue. As we are here to speak about these experiences, the previous Government launched a review about whether bereavement content is needed in statutory guidance, and pledged to consider the points made in the petition. The consultation ran until 11 July. The general election was called before it finished. I ask the Minister whether her Government can take up the work that was begun and look at putting this into the national curriculum, so that when other children face this—because they will—they have the right support. People will know things from other children in the class and that can teach us how to deal with this. It is not resource intensive—it could run alongside relationship, sex and health education or something similar—and it is not a financial burden. Investing time in the children, as the hon. Member for Stevenage said, will save far more time by dealing with things that become problems further down the line. Having personal experience of this, and having been inspired by the work that John has done for all these years as a voice, not just in the UK but internationally on such a hard and difficult subject, I fully support what he is doing to put it in the right context. I urge the Minister to align with me and look at how we can put this back into the national curriculum and honour the work that John has done after losing his mother Maria all those years ago.