I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on securing this private Member’s Bill and on deciding to use the opportunity to introduce legislation on such an important subject.
The Bill makes provision for dedicated leave and pay for employees with responsibility for children receiving neonatal care. I hope it will receive cross-party support as the policy is long overdue. I am sure Members from all parties will be familiar with the situation, either through personal circumstances, as outlined by some hon. Members this morning, or family, and many constituents will also be affected by the current lack of financial support and security.
Parents in this situation currently have to spend a proportion of their maternity or paternity leave with the baby in hospital. Compared with their peers, babies
who have to spend a long time in hospital after birth are usually at an earlier stage in their development when their mother or parents go back to work. That can be particularly upsetting for mothers, many of whom would like additional time with their child but cannot afford to take any more time off work. This initiative therefore has my strongest support.
Leave and pay for those with responsibility for children in neonatal care represent one crucial element in a wider response to the needs of these children and their parents. Before I consider the benefits of implementing such a policy, let me say a few words about the other essential element. Getting the best results depends largely on parents’ ability to take time to be with their baby when it is most vulnerable, in hospital-based neonatal units and services. In February 2019, the then Scottish Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman MSP, visited Crosshouse Hospital in East Ayrshire, only a few miles from my constituency. She was there to announce the launch of a Scottish Government initiative, backed by £12 million of dedicated funding, to testing a new model for neonatal careful. The scheme offers all expectant mums care from a primary midwife, alongside a small team, for their entire maternity journey. Support will be on hand to help parents with babies in neonatal units to provide as much day-to-day care for their newborn babies as possible. In March 2019, the scheme was welcomed by this House in an early-day motion tabled by SNP MPs. The Bill will build on that good work in Scotland and provide benefits for mothers, fathers, siblings and extended families across the United Kingdom.
After decades of falling neonatal mortality rates among all socioeconomic groups, we are now seeing a deeply worrying rising trend among the more deprived groups, which began two or more years after the UK Government’s austerity policies were first implemented. SNP MPs at Westminster have long been aware of the even greater impact of austerity policies in England, where the lack of mitigating actions of the kind implemented by the Scottish Government has resulted in even greater levels of poverty, particularly child poverty.
The scale of demand for neonatal care is considerable. According to Bliss—the leading charity whose vision is for every baby born prematurely or sick in the United Kingdom to have the best chance of survival and quality of life—more than 90,000 babies are cared for in neonatal units in the United Kingdom every year. Neonatal units and the services they offer are fundamental to the care of vulnerable children, but parents cannot always fully utilise them unless they are supported by a dedicated leave and pay entitlement that enables them to afford to do so.
My hon. Friend’s proposal recognises that a critical element of making a success of neonatal care is parents’ ability to take advantage of existing highly skilled and professional neonatal units. However, there are wider benefits. Research in 2018 showed that 80% of parents who have had a child admitted to neonatal intensive care feel that their mental health suffered, while 35% of parents report that there was a significant impact on their mental health. The inability to afford to be with their child in the neonatal unit for the full time is a major factor in those outcomes. The costs for those individuals personally and the impact on employment and family can be immense. Many thousands of families are affected.
The Bill is of considerable importance to the most vulnerable in our society. It will help families at one of the most difficult times in their lives and will demonstrate that as a country we recognise the value of providing support to parents and families who need it at the most emotionally difficult time for them. It has my strongest support and I hope that it will receive the full support of the House.
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