Kevin Bonavia

The motion is that we have considered the petitions before us, and I hope everyone will agree that we have considered them well. Let us hope that there will be beneficial progress as a result of today’s discussions. I once again thank the petitioners. I add my thanks to everybody who has spoken in the debate. This issue clearly has resonance across the whole House and across parties, and we have learned a lot from the personal experiences of Members. We heard from the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) about his own experience of child bereavement, from the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) about the experience of a bereaved parent, and from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) about the experience of the friends of children losing their parents. They are all big personal experiences. I was not going to mention my own personal experience, but hearing from others today reminded me of what happened 26 years ago, when I lost my father to throat cancer when I was 20. At the time, I had a younger brother in his teens and a mother who had to cope for the family. This debate made me think, “What if I had the support that many people have today, and what if that was there for everyone?”, so I am grateful to hon. Members for sharing their experiences. How many hundreds of thousands of experiences like those are out there? I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) for sharing the experiences that MPs hear in their surgeries all the time. They were very harrowing, and we must take them as best we can, but we must learn from them and think about how we can join things up. As she said, the state, in all its forms, is a corporate parent. I also thank the other Members who spoke. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien), whose cross-party approach I appreciated. I thank the Minister for having such an open mind on this issue and for confirming that the Government will take forward what we have heard today in both the cross-departmental working group and her own Department. I will monitor that work and will help the petitioners to do that too. Finally, I thank the petitioners themselves. They have put this issue on the agenda, and we are all grateful to them for doing so. As Members of Parliament, we will do what we can to keep it there. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered e-petitions 636718 and 624185 relating to children and bereavement.