Speeches by Coleman.

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

“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?”

“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?”

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

“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…”

“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…”

“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?”

“Looking at the research, Professor Shehata—we have been looking at lots of research—we see that black women often face higher rates of clinical intervention, so things like caesareans or assisted deliveries during childbirth. That can be quite traumatic for people. Why do you think that this is?”

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

“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?”

“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. …”

“So you would go with something for everybody.”

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

“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.”

“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…”

“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 …”