Hansard

I am very glad to have the opportunity to lead this debate. I thank Catriona Ogilvy and Karen Stirrat, whose campaigns and petitions have gathered so much support. I also thank Bliss Scotland, the national charity supporting premature and sick babies, and the many local charities that help families and raise funds for neonatal units, including the members of Simpsons Special Care Babies in Lothian who are here in the public gallery.

I want to focus on two important matters: the Maternity and Paternity Leave (Premature Birth) Bill, which is a private member’s bill in the House of Commons that seeks to extend maternity and paternity leave and pay for the parents of premature babies; and the steps that we can take in Scotland to improve financial support for families whose babies are born prematurely or require neonatal care.

I express my heartfelt support for Steve Reed’s private member’s bill in the Commons. Legislation relating to parental leave and pay is currently a reserved matter, but I am sure that many of us here wish every success to the campaign to extend parental leave and pay for the parents of premature babies. I understand that the bill will seek to extend paid maternity leave when babies are born before 37 weeks, allowing an additional week of statutory maternity pay for every full week the baby is born before term. That additional maternity leave could be used as shared parental leave between mothers and fathers.

Campaigners have been calling for such changes to parental leave legislation for years. Currently, parents of premature babies are not entitled to any additional maternity or paternity leave in the difficult, distressing, unexpected period between a premature birth and a baby’s anticipated due date, which is time spent in a neonatal hospital ward. Research by Bliss estimates that families with babies in neonatal care can be faced with an average additional expense of around £218 a week, when extra costs such as childcare and travel are taken into account. Those costs can impact on the number of visits that parents can have with their premature baby.

Premature birth can also mean that mothers lose out on their last few weeks, which are the weeks when they were expecting to work for the wages that families rely on when they are budgeting for their baby. Families often count on those savings to cover the gap between the end of statutory maternity pay and returning to work. That degree of financial pressure can force parents to return to work earlier than they would like and before they feel their baby is ready for childcare. In some cases, it might not be appropriate for a baby to go into childcare. A baby born very prematurely—between 28 and 31 weeks of pregnancy—might spend, on average, 44 days in neonatal care, which is over six weeks in hospital: six weeks of parents not knowing when or if they will be able to take their tiny baby home.

New mothers can take 52 weeks of leave, but statutory maternity pay is available for only 39 of those weeks. A mum of a very premature baby returning to work after paid leave finishes would have had, on average, just 33 weeks at home with the baby, a far shorter time than the year of leave that many parents plan to take. Premature babies can take longer to reach developmental milestones during maternity leave. It cannot be right or fair that parental leave in the United Kingdom does not accommodate that difference. Additional paid parental leave is already available to parents of premature babies in a number of European countries, including Finland and Spain.

Extending leave and pay is the simplest and fairest way to address those problems. However, if the bill in Westminster does not progress, it is incumbent on us here in Scotland to listen to the clear message that campaigners are sending and find alternative ways of supporting the parents of premature babies and, indeed, parents of all babies in neonatal care. I ask the Scottish Government to do all that it can to deliver financial support to all parents whose babies need prolonged hospital care.

National health service paediatric hospitals lead excellent work that supports those who need help with the unexpected cost of hospital care. However, the Scotland Act 2016 gives the Scottish Parliament the power to provide assistance with maternity expenses, and we have the power to create some new benefits. I ask the Scottish Government to heed the campaign and make support for parents in those circumstances as robust as possible.

We do not have the latitude to replace pay, but we could introduce a premature birth maternity grant or a neonatal care maternity grant to help parents with additional maternity expenses and take the financial shock out of a situation that no parent can prepare for. Let us build on the good work that is happening with the baby box scheme.

Sadly, up to 40 per cent of the mothers of premature babies are affected by postnatal depression. I am glad that the draft mental health strategy makes perinatal mental health a priority and that we will finally have a managed clinical network for perinatal mental health, but I would like more clarity on how front-line perinatal mental health services will be resourced. I note that Wales has already ring fenced Barnett consequentials that are related to perinatal mental health. The forthcoming review of maternity and neonatal services should highlight opportunities to improve maternal health.

Boosting the income of pregnant women is one of the best ways to improve their nutrition, mental health and overall wellbeing, and the healthier, wealthier children initiative is a well-evidenced approach to income maximisation. Midwives and health visitors have helped more than 10,000 families to gain over £11 million in benefits that they were entitled to, but which they did not know about. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport has already given me a commitment to roll that out across the country. The urgent need to deliver that is made only too clear by today’s annual report on child poverty in Scotland, which shows that 20,000 more children lived in poverty in 2014-15. That is a 14 per cent rise.

The parents of premature babies in particular face financial uncertainty while being deprived of valuable and precious time bonding with their new babies. Too many are forced to choose between putting their babies in childcare before they think that they are developmentally ready, or leaving work altogether. Extending paid leave for those parents is a matter of equality.

We cannot simply leave the matter to Westminster. We must look for alternative ways of supporting those families while we continue to push the UK Government to do the right thing. Let us do all that we can as a Parliament to help those parents and families.