Women’s Health Strategy for England

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for taking this Statement today, and I hope her noble friend is fully recovered from the bug that he acquired—goodness knows where. I declare an interest as a maternity safeguarding champion at a London trust hospital.

We must welcome this rather late and delayed strategy. For too long, women’s health has been an afterthought and the voices of women have been at best ignored and at worst silenced. I welcome the appointment of Professor Dame Lesley Regan as the first ever women’s health ambassador for England.

If this strategy is properly funded and actually delivered, it may not solve the crisis in women’s healthcare after 12 years of Conservative mismanagement but it would certainly help shift the policy and delivery of services. Four out of five women who responded to the Government’s survey could remember a time when they did not feel listened to by a healthcare professional.

The context for this strategy is that, in recent years, we have seen a string of healthcare scandals primarily affecting women: maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford; more than 1,000 women operated on by rogue surgeon Ian Paterson; thousands given faulty PIP breast implants; many left with traumatic complications after vaginal mesh surgery; and the use of medication such as Valprol during pregnancy, as highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, in her report, First Do No Harm, which has helped to transform issues in this space

There is one issue I wish to raise with the Minister immediately, and of which I have given prior notice, which calls into question the Government’s commitment to sexual health rights for women. In the past few days, it has emerged that a statement on freedom of religion or belief and gender equality was issued by the UK as part of the intergovernmental conference it hosted in London on 5 and 6 July. Commitments to abortion and sexual health rights have been quietly removed. Is that true, and, if so, why has that happened?

I return to the Statement. The context of the strategy is that every woman who needs to use the NHS today faces record waiting times. The NHS is losing midwives faster than it can recruit them. Gynaecology waiting lists have grown faster than any other medical speciality. The number of women having cervical screening is falling, and black women are 40% more likely to experience a miscarriage than white women. We need to look at what is being proposed in this strategy.

The strategy promises new research, which is absolutely vital and very welcome. I draw the Minister’s attention to the report from the University of Birmingham commission into safe and effective, accessible medicines for use in pregnancy, Healthy Mum, Healthy Baby, Healthy Future. Chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, it addresses the terrible lack of research into conception and pregnancy. The starting point is that virtually no drugs have been developed or trialled for pregnant women in the many decades since Thalidomide. This leaves women at the mercy of general diseases, the diseases of pregnancy and drugs that are usually unlicensed.

Pregnant women and babies throughout the world continue to get sick and die from largely preventable and treatable causes. Even in the UK, the way in which medicines are developed currently risks preventing pregnant women accessing the benefits of safe and effective medicines. Most recently, the exclusion of pregnant women from Covid vaccine trials has probably led to needless deaths among pregnant women and babies, which highlights this issue. The commission provides a blueprint for action. Will the Government make use of it?

Studies suggest that the gender bias in clinical trials is contributing to worse health outcomes for women. There is evidence that the impacts of female-specific health conditions, such as heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis, pregnancy-related issues and the menopause, are overlooked. Can the Minister set out how exactly the Government intend to make use of the new research to improve outcomes for women? How will they address widespread bad practice across clinical trials where women are not selected because their hormones might distort the results—which really means that they might reveal the side effects that treatments will have on them?

Moving on, we welcome improving the education and training of health professionals as absolutely vital. Almost one in 10 women have to see their GP 10 times before they get proper help and advice about the menopause. Why is it that almost half of medical schools do not teach doctors about the menopause, given that it affects every single woman? Those are two small consequences of not addressing gender in the training of our medical professionals.

I want to ask a question about what my honourable friend Carolyn Harris said in the Commons yesterday:

“I am delighted that my private Member’s Bill that I negotiated with the Government last October now appears as part of the strategy, but I am bitterly disappointed that the timeframe for that once annual charge is delayed until April 2023—18 months after it was promised”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/7/22; col. 980-81.]

My honourable friend needs an answer on that. Why have the HRT costs been delayed until April 2023?

We can only welcome the extra £10 million for the breast screening programme. This screening can prevent avoidable deaths by identifying breast cancer early, but we must note that fewer women in the most deprived areas receive regular breast screening. Even before the pandemic, too many women with suspected breast cancer were waiting more than the recommended two weeks. Can the Minister tell the House how the programme announced today will make a difference to outcomes for patients if, once diagnosed, they end up on a waiting list that is far too long?

There are plans in the strategy to remove barriers to IVF for lesbian couples, which we welcome. For too long, they have faced unnecessary obstacles to accessing IVF for no other reason than the fact that they love another woman. It is encouraging to see the Government take action to set this right.

As well as the appalling figures on black maternity deaths, a quarter of black women surveyed by Five X More felt that they received a poor or very poor standard of care during pregnancy, labour and post-natally. Women who live in deprived areas are more likely to suffer a still-birth than their richer counterparts. Labour has pledged a new race equality Act to tackle the structural inequalities in our society, including in healthcare. Does the Minister acknowledge that those inequalities exist?

There is one final issue that I would particularly like to draw to the attention of the House. Support counselling for women victims of rape is absolutely vital but End Violence Against Women estimates that the Government need to provide a minimum of £195 million each year to rape crisis services to properly respond to that need, with a significant proportion ring-fenced for specialist BAME services. The problem, as a recent survey revealed, is that 60% of people believe that access to free counselling is readily available for rape survivors. That is not the case. The waiting lists are growing. Do the Government accept that this is not an acceptable situation?

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has said. It is always interesting to see what is included and what is excluded in documents such as this. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, I would like straightaway to query the omission of rights to abortion and sexual healthcare. Is that now the policy of the Government and the Department of Health? If it is, that is a very significant change that will have a huge, detrimental effect on the health of women.

It is notable that this document lists its ambitions at the beginning, talking about the availability of RSHE in schools so that young people know and understand what good health is and what their rights to it are. Unfortunately, there is still a dearth of appropriate material getting to schools and there is equally no commitment to training staff in schools to deliver appropriate training. I therefore ask the Minister when that situation is going to be rectified.

Organisations such as the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare and RCOG have been telling the Government for years that there is an absolute crisis in reproductive health services. We have a completely fragmented system for access to basic contraception, which is having a huge impact. We now know that approximately 50% of pregnancies in this country are unplanned. That statistic in itself tells us how far reproductive health has slid backwards.

I am glad to see the appointment of Professor Dame Lesley Regan. Some of the work that she has done in this report says that investment in contraceptive and fully inclusive reproductive and sexual health services is a public health investment which has a massive return on investment. Every £1 spent on contraception is a saving of £9 in public health services. If you invest that £1 in maternity services, the return on investment increases to £33. It is a no-brainer, yet at the moment we fracture access to services so that women who want access to proper reproductive health services end up going multiple times to multiple places. Why? It is because funding streams are fractured. Can the Minister say when that is going to be rectified? The sooner it is, the swifter we get a proper impact on women’s health.

One of the things that I have noticed, having read the review, is that for the first time it tries to be inclusive in its definitions. I also welcome the statements made about access for lesbians to assisted reproduction. The review includes Roma women. It notes the disparities in the appalling health inequalities for black women and women of colour. It also completely ignores trans people. I have a simple question for the noble Baroness. Is that the policy of the Government and the Department of Health? Are these people going to be excluded from our health policy in future?

The final thing I wish to say is that one of the big things that has been noted all the way through our reviews of continuity of care and the great work by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, is that continuity of care is key to outcomes, in particular, continuity of care in primary care, which is where most women want to get their health services. Will the Minister say what will be done to do that?

One other thing we certainly know is that we have an impending crisis in the workforce. The skilled women and men—largely women—who have been delivering women’s health services for the past 30 to 40 years are, by and large, about to retire now. Young male and female doctors and nurses, particularly in primary care, have not been given access to training. What will be done to make sure that the looming skills deficit is dealt with? Unless we address that, this is just a load of pipe dreams that will never come to pass.