Endometriosis Services

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott), who shows that it is not necessary to be suffering from endometriosis to be an endo warrior. We champion it because it affects everyone—people in the workplace, our mothers, our sisters and our friends—so I am very grateful that he has brought this debate to the House. I know he has had to try a few times to secure it.

I have not suffered from endometriosis myself, but I have come here to speak about my brave constituent Sanju Pal, who is in the Public Gallery. After six years of fighting a legal battle, she won a landmark case against her former employer for unfair dismissal at the employment appeal tribunal in London. I am proud to say that her case sets a legal precedent for endometriosis to be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010. I hope Members will bear with me as I tell her remarkable story. The truth is that not everyone should have to fight a legal battle for six years to get their just desserts, but Sanju—a Camden girl—managed that.

In 2018, Sanju was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. She had large fluid-filled cysts on both ovaries, which required an immediate operation. She returned to work a month later in severe pain. She could barely walk and had heavy bleeding because she had pushed herself too much to make promotion to senior manager. She took evidence to HR and told them how much pain she was in, and she was ignored. After three months of a phased return to work, she was sacked without warning. She was told to leave the building and not to contact anyone else. She had worked there for 10 years, and she was told to just walk out the door without telling anyone where she was going and why she had been sacked.

Sanju was sacked on a technicality: she was not ready for promotion within a required timeframe. It is known as an “up or out” policy, and it is used by many corporates. Employees can be dismissed if managers feel that they cannot be promoted within a certain timeframe. The termination letter Sanju received within minutes of the meeting she had did not actually state any reasons for her dismissal. It did not inform her about the right to appeal or refer to the policy that was being followed. She took it to an internal tribunal, where the High Court later found that the panel had completely disregarded the impact statement she had written for the meeting. The internal tribunal ruled that Sanju had not proved that her illness had an ongoing substantial effect on her daily life and stated that many women with endometriosis had no symptoms or mild symptoms, so it could not be taken seriously.

The tribunal initially rejected Sanju’s claim of disability discrimination and lacked any understanding of the physical impact of endometriosis on a woman’s body. She appealed that decision, and the High Court eventually ruled that she was unfairly dismissed from her job without her employer following a fair capability procedure or providing reasonable adjustments for her in her workplace after she was disabled by a condition over which she had no choice. Since her unfair dismissal in 2019, employers must follow the judgment on considering endometriosis as a disability and have to provide reasonable adjustments in the workplace.

I am very proud of my constituent’s tireless campaigning, but I go back to what I said: not everyone should have to go through the mental trauma that Sanju endured for six whole years while she fought this battle, and I do not expect them to. Workplaces should provide reasonable adjustments. It is shocking to me that not a single gynaecological condition is included in the disability guidance for the Equality Act and that although endometriosis can be classified as a disability, it is not automatically recognised as such. That basic change could have saved my constituent time, effort, mental anguish and the anxiety that she told me crippled her life for so long.

Countless other women across the country who are disabled by endometriosis are not given reasonable adjustments in the workplace. For example, in 2024, a Barclays banking analyst was required to work up to 48 hours a week while suffering from endometriosis because her line manager refused to allow any reasonable adjustments at her workplace. She told me that she now lives in Romania with her parents because she cannot afford the medical treatment and is unable to work because of that ordeal. One in 10 women suffer from endometriosis and 69% of sufferers say that they face discrimination at work. Cases like that are too common.

Women should not be forced to go to tribunal just to get the rights they deserve. That is why I want to push the Minister, who has been championing women’s rights for as long as I have known her, which is a very long time. Women should be given specific workplace conditions and the right to reasonable adjustments in their workplace. Endometriosis should be listed under the recurring and fluctuating impairments in the guidance for the Equality Act so that employers actually understand their legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments for women.

Beyond those important changes to the workplace, there is more for the Government to do to ensure that women suffering from this terrible condition get the rights they deserve. For a start, we urgently need better data on the women diagnosed with endometriosis in the UK. The statistic I quoted of one in 10 women having endometriosis, which many people will have read, is from studies in 2009. Indulge me for a second, Mr Dowd, while I talk about what happened 17 years ago. That was before we knew what coronavirus was. It was before Brexit, when we were still in the European Union. It was before my children started saying “six-seven” at every opportunity. It was before I had to go to the hairdresser every week to dye my hair. Surely we need an update to the data to find out what is happening to women now. We cannot rely on statistics for women’s health from 2009. We are better than that as a Parliament.

Only when we truly understand the scale of the issue can we adequately tackle it. If we do not have the right data, we will not be able to tackle it. The provision of services for endometriosis needs to be strategically planned, and it has to have location data. As a London MP, I know the advantages that exist in London. We have to look outside London so that this does not become a postcode lottery for women. [Interruption.] There was a cheer there because most London MPs do not say that, but I thought I would say it. We need to have a greater understanding of the parts of the country that have greater need.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

With what the hon. Member has just said about having a greater understanding, does she agree that, while we all have to play a role, the British Medical Association could help by ensuring that the many GPs across the United Kingdom have a greater awareness and understanding of the need?

[Tulip Siddiq]

I agree with the hon. Member. One of the things that has struck me is how few people actually understand what the condition is. I was having a conversation with someone who I would say is a fairly well-informed man, and he said to me, “I thought it was just a heavy period.” He said that because no one had ever talked to him about it. Medical professionals need to have a better understanding, but we need to have a better understanding generally of women’s health conditions overall.

Does the Minister have plans to improve the data collection of women with endometriosis, and, if she does, how does she intend to utilise the data that comes forward? There is a lot more that I could say about the training in the Department for Work and Pensions on assessing disability benefits for women with endometriosis. There should also be a mandate that employers have a gynaecological health policy and human resources training.

There are others who want to speak, so I will round up by saying that the fact that only 11% of employers in the UK have a menstrual health policy is a shocking statistic. For me, it highlights that there is widespread discrimination against women with these health conditions. For as long as our employment rights ignore the gynaecological conditions of millions of British women, the injustice will continue. I applaud Sanju for her legal battle, but I do see it not as just a victory for her. It is a victory for countless women who are suffering and have not had the ability to go through that legal battle.

I have not touched on the fact—although it will be obvious to many people—that I am from an ethnic minority background. Growing up in the household that I did, I never heard the words “menopause” or “endometriosis”. It is not that women around me did not suffer from those conditions; there was a stigma attached to them and it was taboo to talk about women’s health problems. In 2026 we have got to tackle that, and ensure that women from south Asian backgrounds talk to their daughters about it. They must tell them, “If you are suffering, please don’t suffer in silence, because this isn’t something to be ashamed of.”