Maternity and Neonatal Care
Tuesday, 20 October 2026
Contributions
Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)Labour
3. What steps she is taking to improve maternity and neonatal care.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)Labour
19. What proportion of Best Start family hubs provide Healthy Babies support.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Yvette Cooper)Labour
The Government are determined to give every child the best start in life. We will appoint an independent maternity and neonatal commissioner and publish an action plan covering every area identified for improvement from pregnancy to post-natal care. We will also go further, rolling out Sure Start health services for parents and babies into every family centre across the country, reaching up to 1,000 family hubs over the next two years.
The maternity ward at Kettering general hospital faces significant challenges such as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, overheating during the summer and flooding during the winter. We urgently need to see the maternity ward rebuilt and the money raised by families for a bereavement suite put towards a safe space for families in the most difficult of times. I thank the Secretary of State for all the work she has done on national maternity services. Will she meet me to discuss those specific challenges and ensure that my constituents get the maternity service they deserve?
I will happily meet my hon. Friend to talk about maternity services. I pay tribute to her as well, because she has been a tireless campaigner for improving maternity services and, in particular, bereavement suites for families at the most sensitive times. I also pay tribute to all the families in her constituency who have been involved in those campaigns. Work is under way for a new maternity and neonatal facility in Kettering general, which will include a bereavement suite. We want to work with the hospital and the community on that.
A new report by the Centre for Young Lives advocates putting health at the heart of every childhood, including putting Best Starts, Healthy Babies and remaining children’s centres on a statutory footing. Given that health services have structural advantages in providing capital management and getting new services up and running, what greater role can health services play in integrating services at Sure Start level?
I welcome my hon. Friend’s question. Having been responsible for the roll-out of the original Sure Start programme, I am still angry with Conservative Members who supported the closures of Sure Starts across the country. We are now restoring health services and the Healthy Babies programme to family hubs across the country, because health interventions from the work of midwives and health visitors and work on post-natal depression is crucial to the start of a child’s life. I hope that this time round we will have cross-party consensus as we expand those services.
Mr SpeakerSpeaker
I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)Liberal Democrat
The chief executive of NHS England and I toured the John Radcliffe’s maternity unit this summer. The building is in a dire state: women give birth in rooms with no windows and no toilets—and where there are toilets, they often flood. In fact, Valerie Amos said that it was the worst she had seen as part of her review. The trust leaders are clear with us that they want a new maternity unit. May I invite the Secretary of State to come to Oxford and see for herself? If she has not got the time for that, will she at least have a meeting with me and the trust leaders so that we can discuss how we can move the project forward?
I will happily meet the hon. Member. I pay tribute to the Select Committee for its work on maternity services. Clearly, some of the issues are about capital investment, and we are substantially increasing that to improve the safety of units and facilities, including maternity units. We also want to see higher standards of care not just in labour wards and maternity units but throughout pregnancy. I am happy to meet her to talk about those services.
Stuart Andrew (Daventry) (Con)Conservative
On maternity, two things will stick with me. First, there was the briefing from Donna Ockenden on her report, which was shocking. The other was listening to bereaved mums saying how they are tired of telling their story over and over again, and I hope we can find a better service for those parents; equally, there was the treatment of dead babies in the mortuary in Nottingham. Will the Secretary of State update us on the work being done to ensure that those shocking things never happen to any family ever again?
I welcome the right hon. Member’s points. I know that he has championed those issues both on maternity care and on bereavement. Like him, I have also spoken to some of the bereaved families from Leeds, where the Ockenden review is under way. The issues that the right hon. Member raised about babies and mortuary services, as well as funeral services for babies, show the importance of the broader response to the Fuller inquiry and the regulation of funeral services more broadly. We do need to take action. I am happy to discuss that with him further.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)Liberal Democrat
This week, Matthew Hopkins, who, until November 2025, was the chief executive of one of the worst performing hospital trusts in the country and is now the acute and ambulance network director of NHS Alliance, was reported to have said that the closure of at least 20 rural maternity units was “inevitable” and the “right thing”. In North Devon, we have seen the impact that closures have on women in labour, who have faced an hour and half of driving on country lanes with many turning round to give birth in A&E—a sign of the national maternity crisis being out of control. Rather than agreeing to closures, will the Secretary of State review how we staff rural maternity services to improve safety and protect women, and will she meet me and rural Liberal Democrat MPs who are fighting to protect mums and families?
The work that we have done since the election has significantly increased the number of midwives across the country, which we rightly need to do. I have also been clear to the NHS chief executive that the NHS, regionally and nationally, needs to do everything possible to help reopen North Devon maternity services. I know that work is under way on trying to increase recruitment and support local recruitment. There is a broader issue about ensuring, particularly in more rural areas, that proper recruitment and maternity workforce plans are in place. We need to ensure, and mums need to know, that the services are there for them when they need them, including at the time they go into labour. That will be part of the approach that we are taking to maternity services.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5420658.