TOUCHING TINY LIVES CAMPAIGN AND PRE-TERM BIRTH

That this House congratulates the charity Action Medical Research on having raised £2.5 million for its Touching Tiny Lives campaign to fund high-quality research to help sick and vulnerable babies; notes with alarm that pre-term birth is the single biggest cause of death in babies and a major cause of lifelong disease and disability; regrets that more than 25 babies die each week in the United Kingdom as a result of being born too early; believes that the Government must give a higher priority to finding ways of preventing pre-term birth with the aim of reducing the number of these deaths and the incidence of lifelong disability; acknowledges that reducing the incidence of pre-term birth would lessen the emotional toll on families and the burden on the NHS; recognises that in 2004-05 the Government, through the Medical Research Council (MRC) and NHS Research and Development, allocated £3.7 million to research into preventing premature birth, which represents less than 0.3 per cent. of the combined MRC/NHS biomedical research budget; and calls on the Government to review the funding it provides for medical research into preventing pregnancy complications and pre-term birth to ensure that more babies have the opportunity to live longer, healthier lives.