World Menopause Day

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this debate in recognition of World Menopause Day, on opening it with such an inspirational speech, and on her tireless campaigning in recent years.

As a 50-year-old woman, I will avoid the danger of oversharing; however, becoming menopausal has not been the most fun thing that has ever happened to me. The common symptoms of menopause have been described, but there is a vast array of other symptoms that can not only affect self-esteem, but have a detrimental impact on mental health and the ability to function well day to day. It is no wonder that as many as one in 10 women leave their job as a result of menopause.

My own experience of menopause has included its impact on my sleep pattern. Night sweats, itchy skin, pins and needles, random joint pain, muscle aches and heightened anxiety do not make for peaceful slumber, and lack of sleep, night after night, impacts the rest of the day.

More worryingly for many women, the symptoms of the menopause are broad and varied, and easily dismissed as “just the menopause”. Women run the risk of ignoring the early signs of something extremely serious because they are expected to feel pretty rubbish for a high proportion of the time. That is why a women’s health strategy is so important, so it was disappointing to see it relegated in importance by the new Government.

The Conservative Government brought the NHS to its knees and patients right across the country, not least in North Shropshire, have paid a heavy price. We all recognise that the new Government face a huge challenge in turning the NHS around, but the women’s health strategy was one of the few areas in which the Conservatives made progress. The abandonment of the target of a women’s health hub in every area is extremely disappointing. Failure to ringfence funding incentivises the scaling back of existing hubs in order to ensure that funding is focused on areas where there are performance targets, the meeting of which will be crucial to the local integrated care board and its associated trusts.

Women’s health should not be seen as some niche and distracting target. We make up 51% of the population and have worse health outcomes than men; we live longer, but in much worse health. Women’s health hubs could be one way to ensure that women’s ill health can be quickly diagnosed, appropriate treatment found faster, and the menopause support that they need is available. They are absolutely in line with the Government’s desire to shift care into the community and to prevent, rather than treat, disease.

I would be grateful if the Minister could speak to her colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, commit to the original plan for women’s health hubs, and roll them out in every area, not least Shropshire, where lack of transport and a high level of rurality means that ensuring access to healthcare for everyone can be a significant challenge. The level of service provided at a hub should not be just another postcode lottery, whereby some people who have paid taxes all their lives have to settle for a second-class service, as is so often the case in my area and in other rural parts of Britain.

I welcome measures in the Government’s Employment Rights Bill that will require large employers to publish menopause action plans each year, as part of wider equality plans to improve the retention of women experiencing the menopause. The plans will outline workplace support, such as flexible working and simple adjustments for menopause symptoms. I certainly cannot speak for all women, but I think that alongside those simple changes, wider awareness and understanding of menopause, and a reduction of the taboo around it—and, if the people who manage Portcullis House are listening to the debate, air-conditioning—would play a big part in helping women to remain supported at work.

I want to touch on the shortages of HRT medication, which can be very effective in reducing the symptoms of menopause—I have certainly experienced that. In July 2025, the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy published the report of its inquiry into medicine shortages in England, in which it says that shortages have shifted from isolated incidents to a chronic structural challenge. Access to HRT has been a postcode lottery in recent years. How do the Government plan to tackle geographical inequality in the availability of these drugs?

Finally, I thank all the trailblazing, amazing, campaigning women who have talked about their own experience—many of them are here today listening—reduced the taboo associated with the menopause and brought us to the stage of debating a meaningful, working strategy to improve women’s health as they go through this natural and important stage of their life.