Backbench Business Committee — hearing of 1 September 2026: transcript & video

00:06 - 00:36

Speaker 3

Welcome to the meeting of the Backbench Business Committee, the first meeting after the summer recess, where we'll be considering applications from colleagues for debates in both the Chamber and in Westminster Hall. The first application we have before us is an application for a debate on baby loss, and we've got Andy McDonald and Michelle Welsh presenting the bid. Please present your case. This is a request for a debate in the Chamber for three hours.

00:36 - 02:59

Speaker 5

Yes, we're looking for a debate in the Chamber during Baby Loss Awareness Week, which is the 9th to the 15th of October. This House has held a debate, I think, every year during that week for 10 years, although I think last year when we had it in the Chamber itself was the first time it had been in there for many years. And I think, well, I'd like to think we're all aware of just how impactful and important that debate was. And it came at a crucial time as work was starting on Baroness Amos's national maternity investigation, and it played a really crucial role in, I think, doing in part rebuilding some trust with families and others who've been impacted by baby loss, which remains a terrible thing for anyone to go through, but also nationally something that I think we recognize we need to address as a vital priority across government. Since then, we've had Baroness Amos reporting on the national investigation, but also the Ockenden report.

And if anything, I think the importance of a debate in the Chamber has become even greater. There is a huge amount of work that needs to be done to pull the recommendations from all the reviews to make them reality, to build trust that we are going to deliver the changes that people want to see at the level, at a national level, to make the fundamental change to maternity safety, to get back to listening to parents, to eliminate disparities between due to ethnicity or deprivation, to reduce a safety culture in the system change that we need to see across the NHS. And that debate will play, I think, a vital role in pulling together the various threads of work that have been done across government, but also, I think, crucially, as these things must, is holding government and ministers to account for the progress they've made to date, because this is something where I think families rightly expect the work to be done with urgency, to be done with ambition, and where we need to see that being manifest in the House. So, really crucial, really important moment, really important to families, and I hope we'll be supported. But I'll hand to Michelle to say to fill in what I've forgotten.

02:59 - 03:20

Speaker 8

Thank you. And just to declare an interest, because I am the national maternity advisor to the government, so I just wanted to make that clear before... There are a number of reasons why this debate is so important. The fact that it affects every single constituency in this country. There is not a constituency that this does not affect in one way or another.

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