Helen Hayes

I agree with the right hon. Member about the importance of face-to-face services. I mentioned the excellent community midwifery services that I was able to benefit from as a new mother. We have got ourselves into a terrible state with maternity care right across the country, with tragedies and a real challenge in turning those services around. One of the things I found so important and appreciated so much about that community midwifery service was that during the course of my pregnancies, I got to know the team of five midwives who worked in that service. One of those midwives took me through labour and the antenatal period. That was so important for building the trust that, in midwifery and maternity services in particular, has been badly damaged by service failures in lots of areas of the country. My second daughter has two middle names, one of which is Agnes. Agnes is the midwife who delivered both my babies through that excellent community midwifery service, about which I cannot speak highly enough. Those services have now largely gone; midwifery services are not delivered in that way anymore. On the delivery of online services, parents and carers—all of us—look for advice online all the time, so it is important that there are accredited, reliable, trustworthy sources of good information online. I do not dismiss the role of online services, but they cannot ever be a substitute for the delivery of in-person services. As our Labour Government seek to restore some of the provision that was lost as Sure Start was dismantled, and to respond to the challenges that families face by expanding Best Start family hubs, there are some vital considerations. The first, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) alluded to, is the principle of universality. None of us comes to parenthood for the first time knowing everything about what is best for our baby. For many new parents, irrespective of material resources, the experience is overwhelming. It is an incredibly vulnerable time of life: 10% to 15% of new mothers experience post-partum depression. We should therefore ensure that all new parents can access support and advice in the earliest years, and that it is easily accessible for everyone in their local communities. If support was delivered in that way, there would be no stigma associated with accessing it, and there would be the added benefit of helping to build community cohesion by giving parents from different backgrounds living in the same area an opportunity to connect with each other.