Speeches by Coleman.

“A green light would be that everybody is taking it up. A red light would be that nobody is taking it up. Are we red, amber or green? That is a very bad way of putting it, actually. Out of 10, when 10 is everyone is doing it and 1 is no one is doing it, where would you say the general take-up of the training you offer i…”

“Does that mean more births at home in that particular case?”

“That is very helpful. When women are not offered midwife-led care, is that all women, white and black, or do you find that white women will be offered it more than black women, or is there no difference?”

“That is really helpful. I am going to turn to Sylvia in just one sec, but I am going to ask you a kind of off-beam question. Power dynamics are really important and exist within every society. Does it make a difference whether the midwife, nurse or doctor is black or white in terms of how black women get treated?”

“Sylvia, is there something you would like to add to that?”

“I am sorry to interrupt you. It sounds brilliant. “Rapidly” is great. By when are you asking them to do this?”

“What are the timings by which you expect that the plan will state that this data should be properly recorded? Beccy was talking about three years; you said less than three years. Do we expect to achieve that within a year?”

“That is going to be setting out a series of things that need to happen to get ethnicity data properly recorded.”

“My concern and the Committee’s concern is that there has been a lot of waffle around this for a long time. My colleague Dr Cooper was trying to get some idea of the timing of when we are going to see improvements. I was very heartened to hear that an ethnicity recording improvement plan was agreed yesterday, purely coi…”

“I agree. I have not tested it yet, but I probably should not use those words in the House of Commons.”

“I just want to clarify this. Minister, it sounds very encouraging. I am going to try to talk in non-ministerial language. I am getting the impression that when you came in, you saw how crap things were—data was not being collected; mortality is increasing generally; maternity services are decreasing in quality generall…”

“That is great. What I hear running through this is that we can do it and make it better if we want to. The question is how much society wants to. Obviously our Committee wants to make it better, but I will stop there for the moment.”

“Are there any examples of where that could be shown to be the case?”

“In the second session, my colleague, Dr Beccy Cooper, is going to look at that more with the Government, so to perhaps inform that part of the discussion, there is obviously a cost in collecting the data, but does having good data enable better outcomes and therefore save money, or am I just making a spurious argument …”

“You have raised that, presumably, where you work. You have raised the need to collect better data. What sort of response have you received?”

“Patients do not trust you. Do medical professionals trust their patients?”

“Who does not trust whom?”

“According to the Trussell Trust, the impact of hunger and hardship on people’s health is driving an extra £6.3 billion in Government healthcare spending. What part is the Department playing in reducing hunger and hardship—and thus the related healthcare cost—in my constituency and across the country?”

“You would not say, “Give everybody something”; you would say, “Focus on the most disadvantaged areas”.”

“You are saying we are not having those holistic conversations.”