Lizzi Collinge

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for introducing this important debate. It is hard to fathom but, over the course of this speech, at least four babies will be born in England—they will come into the world, their tiny hands stretching out and a whole future beginning for them with their first breath. The births of my children were among the most significant moments of my life, as is the case for most parents, but alongside the joy comes something that I think every birthing parent will recognise: just how vulnerable you are in that situation and how frightening childbirth can be. You are placing your life and your baby’s life in the hands of others, in the hands of chance and in the hands of the brutal reality of natural processes. I first became involved in maternity advocacy after the frankly quite awful birth of my first child in 2014. Only when that happened did I realise how much harm had been done to someone close to me when she gave birth in 2011. I remember apologising to her with a newborn in my arms: “I’m so sorry; I had no idea how bad it is.” This has happened to women up and down the country. Today, I represent Morecambe Bay, where both those births took place, and where baby Ida Lock was born and died in 2019. Ida and her parents are always on my mind when we talk about issues such as this. I feel obliged to say that the vast majority of maternity care is safe. We talk about all the failings and all the horrors that women have seen, but I do not want that to frighten families. We have to accept that the worst tragedies are exceptions, but the experience of parents who have seen avoidable harm to themselves and their babies is the reason we are here today debating the pros and cons of a maternity commissioner. I will be honest: I do not necessarily have fixed views on this. It has been really interesting to hear colleagues speak, and I look forward to hearing more. I am also very interested in the outcome of Baroness Amos’s investigation. But we cannot just keep trying to learn lessons; we need to take action right now. We have had review after review and inquiry after inquiry, and yet here we are.