Contribution
For complete transparency, let me say that I am the national maternity adviser to the Government; I wanted to make that clear before I begin my remarks. I wish to place on the record my sincere gratitude and thanks to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) for bringing this Bill to the House. I am genuinely delighted to speak in support of it, because its subject matter goes right to the heart of why I entered public service in the first place.
There is one principle that has guided me throughout my working life: where someone is born should not determine their future. The postcode where someone is born, their parents’ income, and whether they are born in an affluent community or a former mining community, should never determine how healthy they are, how well they do at school or the opportunities they will have throughout their life. If we genuinely believe that, then we have to begin at the beginning—not at secondary school or primary school, but during pregnancy, at birth and in those first precious moments and years when so much of a child’s future is being shaped. That is why the Bill matters so much. It asks us to look seriously at the support available to babies and families, and at whether the provision we have actually meets their needs.
This debate takes me back to the beginning of my career, in the heyday. Before coming to the House, I spent years working with children, young people and families, first for the YMCA in America, then back in Nottinghamshire, and then developing Sure Start services across Nottinghamshire and Derby. I worked on the frontline, directly with parents and children, and then I moved into management, helping to develop, plan and co-ordinate services for families—all based on the principles of early intervention, support and prevention.
I was fortunate to work at a time when there was a real belief that children and families should sit at the centre of public policy. We not only talked about early intervention and prevention; we developed services to deliver it, bringing services together, including things like the common assessment framework. Crucially, we talked to parents, families and communities. I believed in Sure Start then and I believe in the principles behind it every bit as strongly today.
Sure Start was never simply a building with a sign on it; it was an idea—a philosophy—not only about how we should treat families, but about how we give every child, no matter their background, the best possible start in life. It said that families should not have to be in crisis before somebody helps them, and that becoming a parent should not mean being handed a list of telephone numbers and then being expected to navigate half a dozen public services on your own. It recognised that a child’s life does not fit neatly into departmental boxes. There was early education and childcare, health visitors, breastfeeding support, parenting programmes, speech and language support, stay and play sessions, and family support and outreach. There was advice about benefits, employment and training. There was support for parents as well as for their children.
And sometimes the most important intervention was not a formal programme at all—sometimes it was a cup of tea. In Nottinghamshire, we understand the power of a brew, because what it really means is to stop: for someone to listen, for someone to care and for someone to help. While I am not advocating for tea to necessarily be a national policy or an amendment to the Bill—nor will I ever advocate for how the Prime Minister makes a cuppa—I will always advocate for those working on the frontline having time to care, time to stop and time to listen, whether they are a support worker in a family hub, a health visitor or a midwife.
Sometimes Sure Start was about a mum walking into a children’s centre, sitting down beside someone she had begun to trust and quietly saying, “Can I talk to you?” That conversation could be the beginning of getting help—that mattered. Relationships mattered and we worked with parents; I feel incredibly strongly about that. Good family policy cannot simply be designed in Whitehall and done to people. Parents know their children and their communities. They know what works and what is missing. When I worked with parents, we listened to them, we involved them, we asked them what they needed and we learned from them. We understood that the mother who did not attend a group was not necessarily hard to reach—perhaps we were hard to reach. Perhaps there was no bus, or the sessions were at the wrong time. Perhaps she was frightened of being judged. Perhaps she was exhausted.