Menopause (Support and Services) Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

Time is very much against us, but I particularly welcome this debate and especially the decision by the International Menopause Society to adopt bone health as its theme for this year. I pay particular tribute to Councillor Janet Gardner of the London Borough of Hillingdon, who has been very public in talking about the impact of osteoporosis. Having people in public life who are willing to talk about that, to demonstrate how they can continue to serve the public, is incredibly important when we discuss these issues.

The Bill’s scope is extensive and, in the short time open to me, I will focus particularly on the lessons that we can learn from public health campaigns, as well as on the points raised by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) about how we turn the aspirations that we all share into transformational change in the way in which women are supported with the symptoms that they may experience and other members of society can engage in providing the help that is needed to access that range of support.

There is an opportunity through the devolution of public health responsibilities to local authorities, which took place in 2013, to ask our local health and wellbeing boards, which play a key role in educating the public about a huge range of different health issues, to take on some of the issues that the hon. Lady raised. In particular, I was struck by the point about a menopause check. Public health bodies are very active in encouraging, for example, parents to take two-year-old children for their health check and adults to access the health check for 40-year-olds. That would be an excellent way of building into public health work an opportunity to raise this discussion and highlight the issues, because it has been striking that so many voices today have said that the key challenge, as with so many different aspects of public health, is ignorance. Not knowing what is happening or how to access treatment and ask good questions remain the biggest barriers to success.

Finally, I encourage the hon. Member for Swansea East and Ministers in responding to think about how we can devise a process that is useful in addressing all the issues that she highlighted, including mental and physical health aspects and the relationship with GPs. We must ensure that local authorities who lead on the work can share best practice so that all women in our society can access excellent services such as those highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) and no one is forced to suffer in silence.