NOTIFICATION OF BIRTHS. (Hansard, 23 April 1907)

§ LORD R. CECIL (Marylebone, E.)

in moving for leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the early notification of births, said that he had taken the unusual course of asking leave under the ten minutes rule, because of the very great gravity of the evil with which the Bill, however imperfectly and however modestly, attempted to deal. At the present moment 120,000 infants under one year of age died in this country every year, and it was no exaggeration to say that of these 60,000 might be saved if proper measures were taken. Such a state of things required the very earnest consideration of the House, for it amounted to this, that out of every 1,000 children born in this country 145 died without reaching the age of one year; and there were particular localities in which as many as 250, 300, or even 400 out of every 1,000 born died at that early age. It was no exaggeration to 1583 say that half of them might be saved; for the rate in some of our Colonies was no higher than seventy per 1,000, and in some of our own counties it was not higher than eighty-four. The seriousness of the question was not diminished by the fact that while the general death-rate in this country had been much diminished as the result of sanitary measures, the infantile death rate remained practically stationary. That he attributed mainly to two causes—neglect by mothers of their own health before the birth of their children, and neglect of the children's health immediately after they were born. He did not suggest for a moment that the neglect was due to wickedness or even to carelessness exactly, but it was in most cases due to ignorance, which was a far more potent cause of infantile mortality than the more commonly assigned causes of parental poverty and intemperance. Something could be done to remedy this state of affairs by the provision of skilled assistance to mothers in the early days of motherhood, and many health societies throughout the country had charged themselves with this duty. Remarkable results had been achieved in Huddersfield from the creditable efforts of the ex-mayor. But under the existing registration law six weeks might elapse before registration, and one-third of the children dying in the first year of life died in the first six weeks; so that these children were dead before the societies to which he referred could know that they had been born. It was solely with a view to remedy this defect that he had been asked to introduce this Bill. It provided that within forty-eight hours of the birth of every child a notification of that birth should be given to the medical officer of health. Notification was to be made in the simplest way, it being specially provided that it might be made by post card, and the duty of notifying a birth was thrown, in the first place, on the father of the child and, failing him, on any one who had been in attendance on the mother. The Bill further required that notification of children stillborn should be made as well as of those born alive. He urged the House to consider the seriousness of the evil the Bill was designed, he would not say to cure, but in some degree to mitigate. This was a non-Party question, and he ventured to hope that the Bill would be regarded as absolutely non-contentious. 1584 It was supported by hon Members in all quarters of the House, and he hoped its promoters would have the sympathetic support of the Government, and that the measure might be passed into law before the close of the present session.