Hansard

I thank Alison Johnstone for lodging her motion and so paving the way for this important debate.

It is often said that the measure of a society is how it treats its very oldest and its very youngest members. There are no younger members of our society than babies who are born prematurely in neonatal care, so the treatment of them and of their parents should be a matter of concern to us all. One of the single most important roles of this Parliament is to give voice to the voiceless, so let us speak up for the rights of those who may not yet speak and let us listen to those whose voices all too often go unheard.

In Scotland, nearly 6,000 babies are born each year who are admitted to a neonatal unit for life-saving care. For those babies, there is usually an early life of operations and high-dependency care, so there is an early life spent not at home but in hospital. As well as the emotional trauma that that brings many families, it means extra costs to travel to and from hospital and, in some cases, for additional childcare. For many, all too often it is a story of wages forgone because one or both parents can no longer meet the demands of their job and they go on unpaid leave. For some, ultimately, it is not just wages that are forgone, but jobs and careers too, as too many parents are forced to give up work or, indeed, are dismissed.

More costs and reduced income is a combination that plunges too many families into debt, and the cost, of course, is not just pecuniary. Four out of 10 mothers of premature babies will suffer postnatal depression compared with one in 10 mothers of full-term babies, and that is not the end of it. Let me share with Parliament this afternoon the real-life example of constituents of mine, Donna and Gavin McColl and their daughter Mirren.

Mirren was born 10 weeks early and required two major operations. As a result, she was in hospital for the first four months of her life. Although Mirren is now at home, she still has to attend hospital regularly, with three hospital appointments this month and two next month, at Wishaw general, Monklands district general, the Royal hospital for sick children and Hairmyres. As Donna McColl said to me this week,

“hospital staff are great at keeping in touch, however community based i.e. health visitors and clubs are not prepared or trained enough.”

She also highlighted that the

“Aftercare and support available to families is poor.”

She takes Mirren to clubs—including massage, music and sensory classes—to help to minimise any developmental delay, but they all have to be paid for; none is free.

Because Mirren was in hospital for the first 16 weeks of her life, as Donna describes it, only five of her nine months’ maternity leave have been spent with her daughter. That is the central point of this debate. The law on maternity and paternity leave assumes that babies are born at full term, but so many are not. That is why I, too, am pleased that a Labour MP, Steve Reed, has introduced the Maternity and Paternity Leave (Premature Birth) Bill in the House of Commons. The bill will go for a second reading in March next year and I am pleased that it has cross-party support, although I gently mention that no SNP MPs are recorded as having supported it at first reading—I am sure that that will be corrected in time for the second reading. In my view, the bill should have the support of every right-thinking member of Parliament and every right-thinking member of our society. As Alison Johnstone pointed out, it is not without international precedent.

Presiding Officer, I conclude by paying tribute to Bliss, which has campaigned since 1979 for babies who are born prematurely. It is—