Back in the day, I spent a few years as a breastfeeding counsellor, doing what I could to support parents when they hit trouble and helping them find solutions that worked for them.

I got involved in that because I wanted to give something back after my breastfeeding journey was helped back on track by a lovely and patient volunteer called Louise who came to my house and sorted me out with great empathy.

Her help motivated me to help other women who desperately wanted to breastfeed but hadn’t been able to overcome their problems but hadn’t had the support that they needed. The guilt that comes along with that is huge, but misplaced. It is not their fault. Those running the health services failed to provide it.

I also became very interested in the implementation, or lack of it, of the International Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk substitutes and the ways that formula manufacturers got round it and how their powerful lobbying of governments kept regulation at bay.

I was also struck by research at the time that, in this country that showed  a poor breastfed baby had better long term health outcomes than a formula fed baby from an affluent background.

You would hope that we might have made some progress with providing support and regulating the manufacturers in the intervening 15 years.

Unfortunately, Lib Dem Peer Sue Miller, in her contribution to the International Women’s Day debate, highlighted that we are actually going backwards. You can read her whole speech here, but here are the highlights:

I am talking about the subject today because the figures on women who breastfeed have plummeted during the last 40 years—and they were not great 40 years ago. That is despite all the advantages to both babies and the women who breastfeed them. I am also talking about it today because the Lancet has just published a series of studies on breastfeeding, and I would like some response from the Government. Today is also very exciting because Codex, established by the Food and Agriculture Organization, has concluded that it will finally open the door in being definite that infant health must trump marketing when it comes to formula promotion. Until now, the World Trade Organization has accepted challenges when Governments have tried to legislate in this area.

Let us look at some of the advantages to the baby. The milk is perfectly formulated, protects the baby against many infections, and reduces the number of hospital visits—the NHS estimates that £50 million per annum could be saved if babies were exclusively breastfed until the age of six months—and the risks of sudden infant death syndrome and of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. For women, the NHS lists the benefits as lowering the risks of ovarian and breast cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

And then she tackled the lack of support and effective regulation:

Although 68% of mothers start breastfeeding after birth, by 12 weeks the number has fallen to 17%. By the time babies are six months old, only 1% are exclusively breastfed. We need to look at the reasons for this. That lack of support for breastfeeding mothers is one, but the other is the relentless marketing of baby formula from the manufacturers. I cannot do better than quote from the Lancet study from February:

“This three-paper Series outlines the multifaceted and highly effective strategies used by commercial formula manufacturers to target parents, health-care professionals, and policy-makers. The industry’s dubious marketing practices—in breach of the breastfeeding Code”,

to which the UK Government signed up in 1981,

“are compounded by lobbying of governments”.

Can the Minister undertake that this lobbying will no longer be listened to? Can she assure us that breastfeeding will be strongly promoted by this Government? Will her Government put some political welly behind the effort to put the health of our babies and mothers at the heart of policy?

This isn’t about putting pressure on women to breastfeed, but about getting more help to those that want to. But it is a great shame that those who do want to are still being failed. If they got the help they needed, that would make a significant difference to long term health outcomes for both mothers and their babies.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social