Women’s Health Strategy

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I join the hon. Lady in wishing every woman across the world a happy International Women’s Day. She opened by talking about the mental health taskforce and saying it is not the first of its kind, but it absolutely is. It was a five-year project that the NHS used to bring together women and organisations from across the healthcare sector to develop a mental health plan—a five-year view—which it did and reported on. As she knows, partly as a result of that, we now have the long-term plan in mental health.

The hon. Lady also spoke passionately, as she always does, about the patients she meets as part of her work and the women who are suffering from eating disorders—sadly, that has been a tragic cost of covid. We know that two groups have been affected by the past 12 months in the mental health sphere: people, including women, with pre-existing mental illness; and, in particular, young women aged 15 to 26, in whom we have seen an explosion in the number of referrals—I believe the figure is 22% for young women seeking help with eating disorders. We have committed funding during the spending review, when £500 million was announced, and I announced £79 million on Friday. Part of that is going to deal with the problems that we have as a result of the pandemic, and with young women and girls—and in some cases young men—who are suffering from eating disorders.

The hon. Lady talked about the stillbirth and neonatal target of halving the number of stillbirths by 2025. We are way ahead of our target on that. The Office for National Statistics published new data last week, and I believe we are looking towards a 30% figure already. We are way ahead of target, and that is a result of the measures that have been put in place in the maternity safety arena, including the saving babies’ lives care bundle and the early notification scheme.

I reiterate that what we are announcing today is a call for evidence from women everywhere in the UK: from every organisation and every friend, every partner, every family of every woman.[Official Report, 12 March 2021, Vol. 690, c. 5MC.] The link has been published today. I published it on the Government website and it is on the Department of Health and Social Care website and on my Twitter feed. It is a link that women can easily access using their phones or their laptops, and it takes a few minutes to complete. We want to develop the first ever women’s health strategy within the Department of Health and Social Care that will deal with all the issues—there are too many for me to talk about now—and all the ways in which women have been affected. These will include research funding and cohorts of trials not using women, using all the information that we have from Paterson and Cumberlege and from women stating clearly that women are not listened to in the healthcare sector. To address that, we need to hear not just from the Paterson women and the mesh women who spoke to Cumberlege; we need to hear from all women everywhere, and that is why we have launched this call for evidence today, to develop this strategy before the end of the year.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) [V]]

I really welcome this call for evidence and my hon. Friend’s clear commitment to hear from all women everywhere. Can she please reassure me that the consultation will not just be about reproductive health, important though that is, and that it will include all conditions and ensure that women have the ability to express freely what they want to see from their strategy? I welcome the timescale of the strategy coming forward in September.

[Ms Dorries]

My right hon. Friend is a huge champion for women’s rights and a Committee Chair. I would ask her, following the work that was undertaken by the all-party parliamentary group on women’s health, to contact anybody that she knows who can help to get this dealt with or who she has liaised with throughout her time as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, so that they can help to get this message out to the people who they know, to encourage women everywhere—and, as I said, not just women but families and anybody who wants to contribute.

Within the first minutes of the link going live this morning, we instantly had 300 responses. I have not checked what the figure is now. We need huge numbers of women and yes, absolutely, it is not just about the usual issues that get talked about, although they are an important part of this. Menopause, menstrual health, maternity and neonatal issues are the things we talk about frequently, but this will be about everything. For example, we know that drugs that are used on women are trialled and developed using all-male cohorts, and that doctors are taught in medical school to recognise symptoms that are taken from men and not applied to women. We know about the inequalities, and we need to know about any subject from disability to mental health; anything that a woman experiences in a healthcare setting, we need to know about it.