NHS Fertility Services

Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Colleen Fletcher

Thursday 19th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and the right hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) on securing this extremely important and timely debate. As we have heard, difficulty conceiving is a problem that will affect around one in six couples in the UK. I want to highlight the experience of one couple whom I know personally, although many elements of their story will resonate with others who have been affected by fertility problems and experienced difficulties accessing IVF treatment on the NHS.

When that couple made the decision to start a family of their own, there was no doubt in their minds that they would have a child together. Even as the early months of trying yielded no success and as many of the people around them, their friends, family members and colleagues, started to fall pregnant, they remained hopeful and expected that it would simply be a matter of time until they themselves conceived. After more than a year without success, and as the doubts that were absent at the beginning started to emerge, the expected did not happen and a sense of heartache, frustration and anxiety began to replace the hope that had gone before. They visited their GP to ask for help and advice, and so ensued a lengthy process involving tests, hospital referrals, and invasive and non-invasive procedures alike, yet the root cause of the problem remained unexplained.

Just as the couple had all but given up hope of conceiving naturally, they fell pregnant, nearly three years after initially making the decision to start a family together. Here, amid the darkness of their difficult journey towards prospective parenthood, emerged a shining beacon of hope. Yet, as we know, beacons can be so easily and cruelly extinguished, and so it was that only 10 weeks later they endured a devastating and heartbreaking miscarriage. The almost one and a half years that followed the miscarriage were punctuated by a continued inability to conceive, further visits to their GP, more tests and, ultimately, referral back to the hospital. The couple were eventually told in November of last year, nearly five years after starting their journey, that their last, best hope of conceiving was through IVF treatment.

More devastating news was to follow, however, because the couple were told that, despite having a clear clinical need for treatment, they were ineligible to access IVF on the NHS in their area. The reason: their local CCG uses arbitrary access criteria that are not applied in other areas of the country in order to ration access to treatment for financial reasons. A miscarriage in the previous three years is one of the criteria used to deny funding—in essence penalising our couple for experiencing a tragic event over which they had absolutely no control.

The unfairness of the situation is further exacerbated by the knowledge that were the couple to live in a different part of the country—my own area of Coventry, for example—they would be eligible for at least one fully funded cycle of IVF on the NHS. In other areas, they would be eligible for three fully funded cycles. That inequitable postcode lottery adds insult to injury for a couple who, like many others, are already trying to cope with the distressing effects of infertility. The couple are now faced with a situation in which their only opportunity for treatment comes with an enormous financial outlay. Therefore, treatment is reduced to a simple financial decision: those who can afford it have the treatment they need, and those who cannot do not—hardly a just system.

That couple, like many other couples throughout the country who are experiencing fertility problems, deserve fair and equal access to treatment. They deserve an NHS that fulfils its guiding principle of delivering care and treatment free at the point of delivery and according to need. To achieve that, the Government must act to eliminate the regional variations in IVF treatment provision, including the use of arbitrary access criteria, and ultimately seek to ensure that all CCGs routinely commission fertility treatment in line with NICE guidelines. That would mean eligible couples having access to three full cycles of IVF, which would significantly increase the chance of successful conception. I hope that the Minister will make such a commitment.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

As no other Members are seeking to catch my eye, I will now move to the winding-up speeches. I call the Opposition spokesman, Mr Justin Madders.