Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this debate. I also recognise my predecessor as the Member of Parliament for Spelthorne, Kwasi Kwarteng, who sponsored this debate back in 2023.
All Members have expressed that they simply cannot imagine what it is like to be a parent sitting in the Public Gallery or watching our proceedings at home. I am struck by the fact that many of those parents would have been sitting there in 2023, hearing, “This is raising awareness,” and, “We have to get going on this.” They have seen the personnel round here change a bit, and have seen us swap sides, but they are still sitting there, and very little has been done since 2023. I hope the Minister can give us some reassurance about what action can actually happen, so that when we have another Westminster Hall debate in three years’ time, and the same people are sat in the Public Gallery, they are not just looking at a different group of people saying the same things and not doing anything.
I have come here to speak on behalf of two of my constituents, Louis Rogers and Harry Pitts. They cannot be here today because they are dead, and their death is unexplained. We can all forgive the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen for doing so, but he said that sudden unexplained death in children is the fourth largest “cause” of death, and of course it is not. He did not mean it, and we all know that. It is just a categorisation, and that is important. I am deeply suspicious whenever I see a pie chart that says, “There is this thing and that thing, and that thing is caused by that thing. Oh, and this huge chunk is ‘others’. We haven’t been able to do that big chunk; that is just ‘others’.” It makes me very suspicious, and suggests to me that someone somewhere is not trying hard enough to make that chunk much more explainable.
There are one or two other things that sudden unexplained death in children is not. It is not sudden infant death syndrome, and the crucial word there is “syndrome”. SIDS is a thing that has been identified; research has been done, preventive measures have been put in place, and deaths from SIDS have been drastically reduced—more power to their elbow. SIDS should show us a way forward about how we might approach this issue with more effort and research. Sudden unexplained death in children also has no respect for persons. It is not to do with socioeconomic circumstances; it is as likely or unlikely to happen to princes as to paupers. It is important that people slay that dragon in their minds.
I want to come to the notion of it being unexplained. It will not come as a massive surprise to hon. Members to hear that I was once in the Army; I have mentioned it on the odd occasion. If I asked someone a question in the Army, they were perfectly within their rights to say, “I don’t know, sir”—but it was a crime if they finished the answer at that point, because everyone in the Army would only say one thing when asked that question: “I don’t know sir, but I will find out.” What we have done hitherto is say to parents, “I don’t know,” and not gone to the crucial second bit of saying, “but I will go away and find out.”
As other hon. Members have mentioned, we need to raise awareness within the NHS—and it would be hugely beneficial if the NHS could do what it said it would do in 2003 and put it on the website—as well as raise awareness in society more broadly. It is awful to think that some parents who have suffered unimaginable and unexplained loss could also suffer stigmatisation within their communities—that they could suffer from suspicion because, obviously, babies don’t just die for no reason, do they?
Equally, it would be hugely beneficial to raise awareness among the police so that they can handle cases far more sensitively. I have heard stories of great practice, but also of not great practice. I also cannot imagine the concern over siblings that must affect so many families affected by sudden unexplained death in childhood. Will the Minister commit to coming up with a plan for sudden unexplained death in childhood? To begin with, we have to get a plan, because without a plan, we cannot change it. Once someone says, “We have got a plan,” we are beholden to report back at a periodicity—let us say, every two years—to see whether we are doing what we said we would.
I have mentioned it already, but the NHS website and raising awareness more broadly is equally important. We in this House and in this Chamber should not be satisfied with one Westminster Hall debate. We have raised awareness generally. We really owe it to our young children—to Louis and Harry and all the other children whose deaths are unexplained—to do the work to give an explanation and reduce the number of deaths in the future.