Baby Loss Awareness Week is an opportunity to recognise all those impacted by pregnancy and baby loss. It aims to raise awareness around these issues, support people impacted by them and drive improvements in care and support. It is not easy to speak out about the issue of baby loss, reliving your pain and reopening the wounds. But it is vital to do so.

In my contribution to this year’s debate, I emphasised that everyone who loses a baby is deserving of our compassion and care. With the number of women and babies dying in UK maternity care increasing, every story of baby and pregnancy loss deserves recognition and respect. Whether it is an abortion, an ectopic pregnancy, a miscarriage, a stillbirth or a neonatal death, your experience matters, your grief matters and your loss matters.

I emphasised that Black women remain on the sharp end of declining maternity services. Black women remain three times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth. Black babies are almost twice as likely to be stillborn. We need targeted action to close the maternal mortality gap. I once again called on the government to fulfil its manifesto promise and set an explicit target to do so.