Paulette Hamilton MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Oct 2025 · Mental Health and Hoarding · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an absolutely brilliant point. Yes, that should be part of the holistic model, but there is no model in place at the moment. It is like the wild, wild west—everybody is just doing as they see fit. That is why I secured this debate. I urge the Government to prioritise the development of national guidelines, in order to equip all frontline workers with the tools to identify and address hoarding compassionately and effectively; to ensure a truly integrated, multi-agency approach that brings together mental health services, social care, housing and emergency responders; and to invest in research and data collection, so we can properly understand the scale, causes and economic impact of hoarding in the UK, and ensure that our policies are evidence-based and our resources are allocated wisely. In my nursing career, we were taught that prevention is always better than cure. That holds true for hoarding. Early intervention is more humane and more cost-effective than crisis response. This issue has remained in the shadows for too long. We have a duty to bring it into the light, to replace judgment with understanding, and to offer a hand up to the millions of our citizens who live with this devastating condition. I look forward to hearing in the Minister’s response how the Government intend to lead this vital change.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Mental Health and Hoarding · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises a valuable point. I will come on to that later in my speech, but I absolutely agree that hoarding disrupts people’s lives.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Mental Health and Hoarding · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right, but this is not just about a solution. A number of people in our society are living with a mental health condition, and it needs to be treated. At the moment, there are no strategies in place, but I will answer his question as I go on. I thank him for his contribution.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  Mental health is something that I have been interested in for years. During the inquiry we did not specifically focus on mental health, but it came up through some of the personal statements a number of times. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that mental health should have parity of esteem with physical health. Without good mental health, there is no health.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. The ringfenced funding was removed. The Committee was told through its inquiry that the funding can still be used—it is just in other parts of the budget. But if we do not have that funding ringfenced, it will not be prioritised. That means that women will continue to suffer in maternity services. I absolutely agree with the hon. Member.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member, who is a member of the Committee—I love him to bits. He has been absolutely brilliant throughout, and I absolutely agree with him. I press the Government to look a little more carefully at some of the things that have been put forward regarding workforce, because some of them are simple things that would make a massive difference for maternity services.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Betts. It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship. I wish to make a statement on the recent publication of the Health and Social Care Committee’s report on black maternal health. I speak on behalf of the Committee, which I formally thank for all its hard work and dedication to this inquiry. I also wish to speak for the black mothers whose lives have been forever changed by failings in maternity healthcare, although I note that many of the issues raised with the Committee affect all women who use maternity services. I thank all those who gave evidence, written or oral, to this inquiry, and I extend my deepest sympathies to anyone affected by maternal health failings. The voices of black women are at the heart of this report, and I thank them in particular for their powerful and often painful testimonies. Despite repeated policy commitments and public concerns from multiple Governments, black patients still receive poorer-quality maternity care and support. The support they receive often fails to meet their emotional and cultural needs, which has led to black mothers in England being more than twice as likely to die during childbirth than white mothers. The figure for 2014 to 2016 was almost five times higher, which appears to show that there has been progress in this area, but I stress that the reduction is partly due to worsening outcomes for other groups, not improvements for black women. Our report follows a comprehensive inquiry that identified three key areas where action is urgently needed: culture, leadership and racism. Racism is one of the core drivers of poor maternal healthcare for black women, and it must therefore be tackled urgently and effectively. Black women suffer stereotyping, bias and racist assumptions during childbirth, as was made explicitly clear to us throughout our inquiry. The testimonies we heard were harrowing. Let me share some examples. First, women suffer due to the “strong black woman” trope. During active labour, one woman was denied pain relief and given only paracetamol—her baby was born 10 minutes later. Another woman was told that she could handle the pain despite losing a concerning amount of blood. We also heard of a midwife who chose to blame an African pelvis for slow labour, rather than check for complications. Another mother was told that she was making noise when she pleaded for help during childbirth, having been ignored by staff. Another experienced racism in its purest form, being told, “This isn’t Africa, you know,” when she had family members visiting. We also heard of a black woman receiving no breastfeeding help or support from white midwives, which changed only when a black student midwife came on shift. A report from Five X More described similar experiences. Racism in the NHS not only harms patients; it affects healthcare professionals from minority ethnic backgrounds who encounter and experience the same discrimination and structural barriers, just in a different context. That, alongside the host of other evidence that we received, led us to call for mandatory cultural competency and anti-racism training in the NHS. Currently, where it does exist, it is optional or limited in scope. We also call for leadership to be held accountable for creating inclusive and anti-racist environments, as we have heard that NHS trusts can refuse even to acknowledge that racism exists in their services. When we spoke to the Minister, Baroness Merron, she agreed that greater accountability is needed. That is welcome, and we will continue to hold her and the wider Government to account on this issue. The second key area for improvement is the workforce. The NHS currently faces a shortfall of 2,500 midwives. On top of that, 74% of midwives cite unrealistic workloads, and 87% report unsafe staffing levels. Those shortages directly impact the quality and continuity of care that all mothers receive. It is essential that there are firm commitments in the upcoming workforce plan to deliver safe staffing levels for maternity services. We also know the importance of continuity of care to both midwives and mothers in building trust, tailoring support and spotting warning signs early. That used to be a national target, but it was abandoned three years ago due to workforce pressures. We call for that target to be reinstated in the upcoming plan. Workforce diversity is also paramount. We have heard that, despite almost a third of the workforce coming from minority ethnic backgrounds, that is true of only 12.7% of senior NHS managers, and 95% of midwife educators are white. The plan must therefore include specific targets to diversify maternity leadership and education, backed by robust monitoring. The third area is data. Without complete data, disparities in maternal outcomes cannot be accurately identified, let alone improved. That is particularly relevant in two areas. First, the current frameworks for monitoring maternal morbidity do not have the same scope or rigour as those for baby deaths or maternal mortality. Successive Governments have discussed implementing a maternal morbidity indicator to track and measure non-fatal complications such as sepsis, eclampsia and postpartum haemorrhage, but progress has been shockingly slow. Developments must be accelerated on that measure, and there must be a clear timetable for implementation. Secondly, too many ethnicity entries in the maternity services dataset are recorded as “unknown” or “not stated”. In a 2022 example from the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital, more than 9,000 missing ethnicity background details were identified. Better data is crucial to improving results for those with the lowest outcomes in maternity health: black women. The upcoming workforce plan must also include support and training for effective data collection. The final area I would like to discuss is funding. All the issues relating to maternity care that I have spoken about today simply cannot be fixed without adequate funding, yet the maternity service development fund has recently been cut from £95 million to £2 million, which is deeply concerning. Although the NHS said that the money is still available and has just been moved elsewhere in the budget, we are concerned that, without ringfenced funding, maternity services will be deprioritised and will continue to cause harm to all mothers. We therefore call on the Government to restore the dedicated, ringfenced funding for the maternity service development fund to its previous amount. Since 2019, the NHS has faced a £27.7 billion bill for maternity negligence. That exceeds the total maternity budget for the same period by almost £10 billion. I know there are funding pressures across the NHS, but that clearly shows that greater investment here would have the potential to more than pay for itself. Since we launched the inquiry, the Government have announced a rapid national investigation into maternity and neonatal services, which is welcome. Addressing the racial disparities in maternal outcomes must be one of the core aims of the investigation, and I hope to see it as a prominent feature in the investigation’s work.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his question—he knows what I am going to say. Yes, I do agree with him. I became chair of the APPG on black health because I feel passionately that there needs to be more equality in this area.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  That is a really important question, and the answer is yes. We were absolutely disappointed not to see it. Several members of the Committee highlighted that it was not there.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend, who is a brilliant member of the Committee, including during the inquiry. She is absolutely right. The issue of cultural change applies to everybody. We need to look at cultural change within maternity services, not just for black women but for all women. If we are to get the improvements in maternity care that we need, we need to look at how we can develop both the cultural awareness training and, more so, people’s mindsets, because of how they think within that system.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  To be brief, we do need to look at data. It is crucial that the rapid review takes on board the data and improves the way that it is collected and used.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  We will of course share this report far and wide. I am hoping that every parliamentarian has had a copy. We will ensure that it gets anywhere that it needs to go. If Members share where it needs to go, we will ensure that it gets there.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  I would like to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) and for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman). I absolutely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham says. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East, we do not have long enough to go through what needs to be done, but I think the recommendations in the report would be a good start.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Jhoots Pharmacy · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his response. Community pharmacies, such as Lodge pharmacy in Perry Common in my area, play a vital role and offer an excellent service, and that is why I am concerned when places such as Jhoots pharmacy close or, maybe, fold. The winter months are coming, and I am passionate about winter measures. How will we ensure that our pharmacies can offer the winter vaccines needed this year if we lose large chains, such as Jhoots?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Pride in Place · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Labour Government’s £20 million investment in Kingstanding in Birmingham. For 14 years, my constituency was repeatedly overlooked; it was even denied levelling-up funding on two occasions. Can the Minister assure me that after 14 years of Conservative neglect, local residents will come first, going forwards?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for leading this important debate and the 163 people in the Birmingham Erdington constituency who signed the petition. Their voices make it clear that SEND provision is a pressing priority in our community. SEND provision is a daily reality in the Birmingham area. More than 17% of our pupils receive SEND support, and we are proud to be the home of seven special schools, with many more offering SEND provision, so the issue of SEND reform affects thousands of families in my area. I wrote to more than 40 schools in my area earlier this month, and I visited Hawthorn primary school in Kingstanding. The dedicated staff made three issues crystal clear to me: they face a funding crisis, there is a dire need for extra places at special schools, and specialist support in mainstream settings is, in their words, “patchy at best”. [Dr Rosena Allin-Khan in the Chair ] That story was repeated across my constituency. People described a process that is failing families. They spend three years or more on a waiting list, followed by the 20-week wait for an EHCP—a deadline that the local authority constantly misses. The Public Accounts Committee warned that the SEND system is arguably already at “crisis point”. Despite extra funding being provided, councils face a projected deficit of more than £8 billion by 2027. We all know that the system must be reformed, but that must not come at the cost of removing children’s right to learn, thrive and live their lives to the fullest. For children who can thrive in mainstream schools, we must guarantee the support and staffing that make inclusion a reality, not just a promise. We cannot afford more delays. We cannot afford more uncertainty. Let this debate be the moment that we take a stand a build a SEND system that works for every child.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Playgrounds: Bournemouth East · Hansard source

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  In my constituency, many children have no playgrounds. The population is very young—over 69% are under the age of 45—and play equipment in the playgrounds is of very low quality. Does my hon. Friend believe that funding must be set aside to ensure our playgrounds are brought up to the correct standard?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q2. The Mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker, is delivering growth and jobs by backing SMEs such as Booghe Toys in my constituency, which has just doubled in size. Will the Prime Minister join me in praising this success and confirm that boosting ambitious small and medium-sized businesses across the UK remains a key priority of his Government?

• 9 Jul 2025 · Birmingham Pub Bombings · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. Does he agree that for my constituents Julie and Paul—the relatives of two victims—who have waited for over 50 years to get justice, enough is enough? The families are still grieving. We must secure an independent public inquiry that includes the effective participation of the relatives as a matter of urgency, so that the families can get closure.