Speeches by Coleman.

“I would like to come on to Alison, but if you do not mind I will stay with you for a minute, Rachel. There is a dearth of financing compared to the way it used to be, but are you saying that we are still not spending it as cleverly as we could if we joined things up better?”

“That is very helpful. Throughout this, you have been talking about how we need long-term and ringfenced funding, and we need it to be obligatory—we need the funding to be ringfenced and required by law. This is about what you think should be in place to ensure that this happens. Should we be insisting in some way that …”

“Taking that point, Alison, when something is as ripped to pieces as Sure Start was, and when there are cuts across the board for everything, you cut knowledge within central Government and lose civil service expertise. Do we have the expertise, at the moment, in central Government, to drive this effectively and improve…”

“So you would go with something for everybody.”

“Sorry—you are unpacking jargon with more jargon. Lower layer super output areas?”

“Thank you. Christine, would you like to come in on that?”

“That is really helpful—thank you all very much.”

“Christine, may I just check something with you? You said that Sure Start used to get about £2 billion, and by using every imaginative approach—I think you talked about taking a maximalist approach and double counting—family hubs get £600 million, which is about a quarter of what they used to get. I have also read that …”

“I have been listening to this discussion with rising fury. The situation we are in now, with the collapse in health visitor numbers and in the funding to help parents at the start of their children’s lives, is—I have to say it—an absolute disgrace. We are letting our communities down. We are letting our families down. …”

“I am most grateful to the hon. Member for leading this debate so effectively and raising these important issues. She will be aware that three in four dementia carers have no alternative plans in place if they are unable to provide care. Many of them are terrified about what will happen to their loved ones if they are n…”

“That is really quite shocking. That is your experience. You have also talked to lots of other black women and black mothers. What are the most common themes that you are hearing? What are the things that you are hearing? Is it about being listened to? Are there other things that come out? What makes you think that this…”

“I say “stupid assumptions”. The phrase I should use is “racist assumptions”. How do we get that to change?”

“I used to be on the integrated care board for north-west London and I spent a long time trying to get it to recognise structural racism as an issue. It did, and it has instituted a programme. I do not know how much difference it has made, but this partly came out of covid, when lots of black people did not want to be v…”

“We do not really think about it. There is no ethnic proper ethnicity measurement for operations that people go into. We are not just talking about maternal health. When Penny Dash came to see us, she talked very encouragingly about improving data in the NHS. Through data, ethnicity data, and talking to people and liste…”

“You said, “I am in labour.” What did they say?”

“They did not believe you were in labour.”

“They did not check.”

“Tinuke, thanks for coming in. It is really good to see you. I have watched your TED talk. What you are doing is brilliant. It is just a tragedy that you have to do it. Not everyone may have heard what you had to say in that TED talk. I wonder whether you can tell us a bit about your own experience that led you to co-fo…”

“Is it about empathy? You will be busy. You will be treating white women, black women from a Caribbean background who have lived here for generations, women who have really recently arrived from, say, Somalia, and people from an Asian background. You will be treating all sorts of people. You will be treating white women…”

“That does not mean they say to white women, “You cannot stand as much pain as a black woman,” “Your pelvis is a different shape,” or whatever. Is there something further back that needs to happen before they get on to a busy ward and are confronted with these situations?”