Every year we celebrate World Breastfeeding Week on 1st-7th August to raise awareness about the issues around breastfeeding. #WBW2024’s theme ‘Closing the Gap: Support for All’ focuses on how families, societies, communities and health workers can support breastfeeding.
Our CEO, Catherine Hine considers why and how the incoming government could bring real change for families in ‘Closing the Gap’, whatever infant feeding options and choices families face…
On the 5th July, the UK woke up to the landslide victory of a Labour Party led by Sir Keir Starmer’s commitments that ‘change begins now’ with a government ‘ready to serve’1.
Labour’s manifesto missions were rooted in ‘issues that affect families’. The Labour leader has confirmed that these missions will be his focus to ensure fairness, opportunity and choice for all.
For a government keen to make its mark, the evidence is clear. Prioritising appropriate and accessible infant feeding support will also help Labour in its mission to invest in the prevention of any number of illnesses impacting women and children through population-level benefits and so re-build an NHS ‘fit for the future’.
Labour must make a long-term investment so that all families who need it can access the high quality, accurate infant feeding information and support they need. There is no time to lose.
Why is this vital? Although over 8 out of 10 mothers in the UK start breastfeeding, more than 6 out of 10 then stop before they want to, citing lack of support as a common factor2. Women living in more deprived areas or from under-served communities are even less likely to access the information and support they want and need. It is hardly surprising that despite notable progress in Scotland, overall, the UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world.
Key government representatives, Angela Rayner and Andrew Gwynne, have both talked about the transformative role of Labour’s Sure Start Centres, forerunners to Family Hubs. Sure Start was key to community-based infant feeding services: services provided by health care professionals and trained peers (women with lived experience) with time to listen to and support alongside parents. Parents must be able to depend on infant feeding support, which means investment must be adequate and for the long term. For example, the well-respected National Breastfeeding Helpline, (NBH, which is run by BfN in partnership with the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers), can ensure qualified support is available round the clock 365 days per year, complementing and taking pressure off local and regional health services.
Families who want or need to use infant formula faced price hikes of over 25% in the last two years. Seeking to do the best for their baby, a family will have sacrificed £500 or more over one year of their baby’s life to afford more expensive formulas. By law, these formulas are nutritionally no better than cheaper brands3. Families, health care professionals and governments alike are deceived, nudged and bullied by an industry with a sophisticated playbook and marketing budgets comparable to the entire global annual budget of the World Health Organisation4. The breast does not have a comparable marketing budget.
Fifty years since left-wing activist group War on Want drew the attention of the world to the underhand marketing tactics of this industry, the industry continues to insidiously interfere with and undermine women’s and families’ infant feeding choices. On our own doorstep.
Infant formula is an essential and irreplaceable food source for babies under one who are not fully breastfed, and it should be affordable for all. In England, even the cheapest infant formula is not affordable using the government’s Healthy Start vouchers scheme5.
Loyalty points and BOGOFs are no more than tinkering; they are not change. They will not guarantee the consistent, fair access that working families and the most vulnerable in our society need. To support all families, including families living in poverty, the Labour government must:
- Invest in the breast for women and families who want to and can breastfeed:
- Ensure all families can access support from skilled health care professionals
- Invest in trained peer support, to work alongside healthcare professionals at local and national levels (through the NBH and community peer support)
- Invest in free, safe, reliable human donor milk banks for those who want or need access to breast milk but cannot breastfeed.
- Recognise that like energy and essential transport infrastructure (commitments in Labour’s manifesto), the food security of our youngest citizens and their families cannot be safeguarded through corporate interest:
- regulate the existing infant formula market (including intervening on formula prices)
- explore the potential to make and supply a generic, not-for-profit, plain-labelled infant formula, using UK produced ingredients and supplied with strictly factual infant feeding information that families can trust6
Labour has committed to ‘govern for every single person in this country.’ This must include babies, children and the families who are fighting to feed them. We look forward to working with Labour and building on the excellent reputation and service already offered by BfN and the NBH, we are ‘ready to serve.’
Catherine Hine, CEO
1 Labour Manifesto (2024) https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/5-Missions-for-a-Better-Britain.pdf
2 McAndrew F, Thompson J, Fellows L, Large A, Speed M, Renfrew MJ (2012) Infant Feeding Survey 2010, Health and Social Care Information Centre
4 Further research available from The Lancet series on Breastfeeding (2023) https://www.thelancet.com/series/Breastfeeding-2023
5 The Food Foundation (December 2023) https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-01/Healthy%20Start%20Infant%20Formula%20Briefing.pdf
6 City University, Centre for Food Policy 2023 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59f75004f09ca48694070f3b/t/644115bec6416e7c4884ffad/1681987039775/How+secure+is+our+infants%27+food+supply+March+2023.pdf