Women’s Health Strategy

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

With permission, I will make a statement on the Government’s renewed women’s health strategy.

The NHS was founded on the principle of equality and the right care for everyone, whenever they need it, but there is no getting away from the fact that it has failed to live up to that founding promise. For too long, women have been left to navigate a confusing system, fighting to get the basic care they deserve, and under-represented in health research. Above all, women’s voices and choices have been dismissed, and it is truly shocking how often women have been ignored when telling medical professionals about their pain. From pelvic mesh to endometriosis, we are expected to put up with pain as our lot in life, as if it were normal. But it is not normal, and since coming into office this Government have taken a number of measures to improve women’s health.

We have taken action to bring down gynaecology waiting lists, introduced menopause questions into routine health checks, made the morning-after pill available for free at high street pharmacies, stood up a rapid and independent investigation into maternity services, and introduced Jess’s rule, so that GP teams have to “reflect, review and rethink” if a patient presents three times with the same or escalating symptoms.

The blunt reality is that the NHS is failing women and girls on even the most basic measures of healthcare. Indeed, we do not treat all women equally either. The wealthiest 10% of women live almost 10 years longer than the poorest 10%, while the most deprived spend over a third of their lives in bad health—something I see starkly in my constituency of Bristol South. Disabled women experience poorer outcomes, and we should recognise the additional disadvantage faced by black and Asian women, who face the double discrimination of racism and misogyny all at once.

Our renewed women’s health strategy will address those and other glaring injustices. It will give women and girls faster care from a health system that actually listens. It will make it simpler and faster for them to access the care they need the first time they ask for it, and it will make sure that the latest innovations work for women, ranging from reproductive and maternal health to menopause and chronic conditions. Of course, every day women are receiving outstanding, compassionate care from our dedicated NHS staff, but being ignored, gaslit, humiliated and disrespected are all-too-common experiences for far too many. More than eight women in 10 say there have been times when healthcare professionals did not listen to them. Our mission is to dismantle the culture and ingrained behaviours that allow that medical misogyny to fester and grow, and that starts by listening to women.

Women’s voices and choices are the golden thread that runs through this renewed strategy. Their voices will be heard, as we work to reduce variation in how GPs listen to and respond to women, using patient survey data in a quality improvement programme. Their voices will be heard as we capture whether women have been treated with respect, kept informed, and involved in decisions about their own care. Their voices will be heard, as we co-develop new standards of care for procedures such as hysteroscopy, so that every woman has informed consent and a real choice over her pain relief.

Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that we will do the first trial of a scheme known as patient power payments, which will cover gynaecology services. Women will get a say on whether the NHS provider should get full payment for the services women receive, based on the quality of their experience. It means that if a woman is not happy with her experience, a portion of the tariff paid to that provider would be redirected to fund improvements in the same services instead. In other words, women will have the power to kick medical misogyny where it hurts: in the budget.

All this is building on the evidence and expertise that informed the original strategy. I wish to acknowledge the intended ambition of that work, not least because it was based on the contributions of thousands of women. However, the changes that were promised have not translated into consistent improvements in access, quality of care or outcomes. Take gynaecology services. The waiting list for gynae care was north of 600,000 when we took office. Today that figure is finally moving in the right direction, but we cannot make as much progress as we would like because the system simply was not designed with women in mind.

I pay tribute to Baroness Merron, who has led this work on behalf of the Government. As she made clear in her foreword, this system was not designed in such a way—to be fair to Nye Bevan, in 1948 he was largely thinking about working men who were dying early in their sixties from the awful consequences of poor work, with some support for maternity services. We need to change that. We will support integrated care boards to introduce a single point of access for all non-urgent referrals to gynaecology and women’s health services, to speed up access. We will redesign the most common clinical pathways for heavy periods, menopause and urogynaecology, to remove unnecessary delays. Women with fibroids and endometriosis will be listened to at first presentation. They will be seen faster, and offered clear information through our new virtual hospital, NHS Online.

Women’s health pathways are being prioritised in NHS Online, and menopause and menstrual health services will be among the first to go live when it becomes operational this year. There will be a relentless focus on reducing women’s pain, improving standards, and reducing variation in both procedural and chronic pain management, including for chronic pelvic pain. We will launch a new programme to help young girls grow up understanding their menstrual health and know when to seek help.

From gynaecology to pain relief, our renewed strategy takes forward the work of the previous Government, and goes further and faster to fill the holes they left. It has only been made possible by the record £26 billion in funding for the NHS that was secured by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, the first woman to hold that office. All that will be underpinned by an NHS that finally listens with respect, dignity and compassion to the voices and choices of every woman and every girl, every time. That is not least with the creation of the women’s voices partnership, which is a new space for organisations representing women, giving them a direct line to Whitehall to inform national decision-making. The partnership will have a particular focus on those women who are most excluded from traditional services, and through it we will ensure that women’s voices help to shape the long-term direction of NHS reform.

Unlike the original strategy that was based on an outdated model of care, this renewed strategy maps across the three shifts in our 10-year plan for health. The shift from sickness to prevention will mean that women can better understand and act on their risk of conditions such as breast cancer and diabetes. The shift from hospital to community will mean services designed around women’s lives, with much faster access to diagnosis and treatment. The shift from analogue to digital will mean that women will avoid long waiting lists for painful conditions through NHS Online. Within two years we will launch a new challenge fund, backing the most promising women’s health technology start-ups, with a focus on tackling health inequalities in community settings. We are embedding new sex and gender policies into studies through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, so that findings are genuinely representative and no woman is left behind by science.

As every woman hearing this statement knows, to fully exercise power over our lives we need to be at the top of our game, both mentally and physically. We also know that women’s health has been neglected for too long. It therefore falls to this Government to restore the founding promise of our national health service, and to deliver the right care for everyone when they need it. From the classroom to the clinic, our renewed women’s health strategy promises a fairer, healthier future for women and girls everywhere, acting on women’s voices and choices, transforming NHS performance in services that matter most to women, supporting all women to live healthier lives, and creating an approach to research and development that works for and empowers women. We are designing the system to fit around women’s lives. This will not be a strategy that sits around gathering dust on a shelf, because women are counting on us, and we will not let them down.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I am glad to see that the much-delayed women’s health strategy is finally here, and I thank the Minister for her work on that and for advance sight of her statement. I am particularly pleased that Ministers have pledged to prioritise medical health conditions such as endometriosis and to continue the roll-out of the HPV testing that we piloted.

Today it is one year since the For Women Scotland judgment in the Supreme Court confirmed that sex is biological sex. At the time the Secretary of State told the public:

“We will be issuing guidance in the coming weeks before the summer”.

To be fair to him, he did not say which summer. This week, a Minister told the House that the guidance on single-sex spaces could not be published under purdah rules until after the local elections. Will the Minister explain why it is okay to announce policy on other aspects of women’s health but not on single-sex provision in the NHS?

I find it remarkable that the Minister has the audacity to talk about women harmed by pelvic mesh when, after almost two years in office, the Government have still not responded to the Hughes report. When do they intend to do so?

I was disappointed not to find a commitment in the strategy to the lobular breast cancer moon shot project. Will the Minister give us a timeline for what I understand is a commitment to that project by the Government?

The Minister talked about waiting lists. While it is welcome that gynaecology waiting lists have fallen in the past year by 1.9%, for those requiring some sort of procedure or admission, waiting lists are 4.5% higher than they were a year ago. One way to make waiting lists shorter is to not start counting until someone has been waiting for a few days already—more targets can certainly be hit that way—so will the Minister clear something up for me? The Government have decided to prevent GPs from directly referring patients to consultants, insisting that they request advice from consultant-led teams instead. If the consultant then decides to offer an appointment, the clock starts, but that will be a few days after the original request is received, making the waiting time a few days shorter. This is where it gets really confusing: the Minister for Care said that the rules are going to change so that the clock will start when the advice request is received, so that patient waiting times are accurately reflected, but the Minister for Secondary Care has said that that will only happen from October.

Who is right? Do the Government intend to try and fiddle the figures by making people’s waits look shorter between now and the autumn? Given that we have heard different answers from two different Ministers, do they not know what is going on? Or can they confirm that with their new process and with immediate effect waiting times will be calculated from the moment that the advice and guidance request is received, in the same way as happens with referrals now?

The first chapter of the strategy is about acting on women’s voices and listening to women, which of course is welcome, but the Government plan to abolish Healthwatch in favour of listening to organisations. Why are the views of organisations that may or may not accurately represent the voices of women more generally being prioritised, and the voices of women themselves being somewhat deprioritised?

In the strategy, the Government commit to increasing capacity for surgical—in other words, later—abortions. They commit to making the morning after pill available free from pharmacies; they have made the oral contraceptive pill available from pharmacies too, and they have said that they will improve workforce capacity to provide long-acting reversible contraception. At a time when sexually transmitted infections are on the rise, with potential significant short-term and long-term consequences for women, there is no mention of condoms in the strategy. Given that some men can be reluctant to use condoms and there is discussion of eliminating misogyny throughout the document, will the Minister explain the choice not to include those too?

Another issue I want to raise is that of fracture liaison services. On entering Government, the Secretary of State said that one of his first jobs would be to establish universal fracture liaison services by 2030, yet that is moving at such a slow pace that he will not meet his target. Will the Minister set out how many of the dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry—DEXA—scanners are new, how many are replacements and how many will be used to set up new fracture liaison services?

There are many more questions that I can ask, but I understand that I have run out of time. In summary, while there are a few good points, it has taken a long time to produce a strategy that is rather disappointing. Women deserve much better.

[Karin Smyth]

It is hard to know where to start. I heard the word “welcome” somewhere in the hon. Lady’s remarks, so thanks for that.

In launching what we call a “renewed strategy” we have given credit to the previous strategy, which we welcomed when we were in opposition. However, on issues where there could be cross-party agreement, from going to war to the women’s health strategy, the Conservatives’ modus operandi is now to give nothing for us to work on together on behalf of the people who we represent. It is disappointing that they choose to start on a negative and really they could have done better.

In opposition, we welcomed the initiative to have a women’s health strategy and we supported that work going forward, which has led to the publication of this renewed strategy, because the diagnosis of many of the issues was right. However, as I have made clear, we are upending the system because for decades the health service was built around the work and health needs of men and the predominance of men working in the system, despite the fact that 77% of our nursing staff are women. We are upending that to put women’s voices and choices front and centre, including control of the budget and through NHS Online. Those are the game changers.

The Conservatives do not recognise the total game-changing nature of NHS Online in facilitating services for women wherever they live across the country, whether they live near highly specialised centres, such as those that I am privileged to have in my city of Bristol, in the coastal and rural communities represented by Members from across the House, or near tertiary centres. Any woman, from any part of our country, can access NHS Online and have that specialist service. We are trialling that with gynaecology. They will then get support from our rapidly expanding community diagnostic centres, about whose expansion we made an announcement this week, in order to get quicker diagnosis and the support that they need, closer to home in their neighbourhood health services.

I am happy to respond to the other issues that the hon. Lady raises, including the For Women Scotland judgment, and to set out the work that we have had to do to clear up the mess that the Conservatives left. Everything that happened to women under that system happened on the watch of the Conservative Government, from self ID to the issues at the Tavistock and everything else. There was a lack of rules, a lack of governance and a lack of clarity, and they did not take control. That is the mess that we inherited from the Conservative Government.

The Minister for Women and Equalities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), is doing an excellent job: she is made of steel and good experience, and she has had to navigate a difficult landscape. The Conservatives understand the rules of purdah like the rest of us, so let us not pretend that they do not. My right hon. Friend will be laying that guidance as soon as she can after the election.

I will go on to talk about the DEXA scanners that we are investing in and fracture liaison services bringing people together, which were promises in our manifesto. This strategy is about specialists coming together and working together in fracture liaison services and women’s health hubs. Those have led the way among clinicians about how we can work better for women. That is why we are building on and expanding them, and it is disappointing that the Conservatives do not want to work with us on that.

[Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the women’s health strategy. I recently visited the Navigating Our Womanhood Together bus in Dudley, which supports women’s health from menstruation to menopause, and I look forward to more such initiatives being delivered as part of the strategy in my constituency. Will the Minister set out how the strategy will harness allied health professionals, including specialist physiotherapists, to support pelvic health, such as incontinence, prolapse and post-natal care?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion in this area. We are so pleased to have her clinical experience and no day goes past without her representing her own speciality of physiotherapy and AHPs more generally. She is absolutely right that those professionals have led the way in looking at women’s care and it is important that women feel confident with that physiotherapy advice. I think that she will be pleased to see the developments that will come from the women’s health strategy and those that will come when we bring forward our workforce plan, which will have AHPs front and centre working in women’s neighbourhood healthcare.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome the strategy, and its specific recognition of the socioeconomic and racial disparities in women’s healthcare, which it is important to put front and centre. We also appreciate the specific recognition of endometriosis and similar conditions. My partner, Emma, suffers from endometriosis, and on many occasions I have seen her unable to stand up or barely get off the sofa, having been told for years that her symptoms are completely normal and that there is nothing wrong with her. Given that at least one in 10 women suffer from endometriosis and there are over 500,000 people on gynaecology waiting lists, clearly her experience is not unique.

The picture around maternity safety is deeply troubling. Maternal mortality has increased by over 20% in the past 15 years, and there have recently been some high-profile media discussions about women and babies being let down, sometimes with devastating consequences. That is why the Liberal Democrats have been calling for one-to-one midwifery care and specialist doctors on every unit.

I welcome the Government’s specific commitment on treatments for morning sickness. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) has campaigned on that issue for a long time, and it is right that we end the postcode lottery for these medicines. The condition can be debilitating for some people, and it is not fair that women have different experiences simply because of where they live.

Given that this is not the first women’s health strategy to be brought to this place—the previous Government brought one through in 2022—and the fact that many women we speak to do not feel that there has been any meaningful change, a lot of people are saying that we cannot just keep announcing strategies while women are waiting for basic care. Given the failure of the last Government to deliver meaningful change, can we have reassurances that this will not simply be another strategy announcement and that women will feel a difference in the care that they receive?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the Liberal Democrat representative for his comments—frankly, that is the way it is done.

Let me turn to some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. May I take the opportunity to mention endometriosis in particular? There have long been campaigns on that issue in this place from many women and men such as him talking not on behalf of their partners, but for them about the suffering. That is all very welcome.

I commend the work of Sir David Amess, a former Member of the House whose plaque is behind us, and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) in chairing the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis. When in opposition in 2017 or 2018, I had a member of staff—I hope she does not mind my saying so—who opened my eyes to this issue. Persistence works. We have got to where we are by supporting women’s voices across the country, and that is front and centre in this strategy.

On the hon. Gentleman’s wider point, I am sure that when he gets all the way through the strategy, he will see that there is a list of 102 actions—if I remember rightly—with dates aligned to them. I am sure that all hon. Members will look at that. I notice that my friend Baroness Merron is in the Gallery; she will be keeping everybody’s feet to the fire, including the Secretary of State’s, to deliver on this work. That list is in the strategy, and we wanted to set it out very clearly. We are waiting for the roll-out of NHS Online during the summer, and seeing how that works will be a litmus test for us, so I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s challenging us on that.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome the women’s health strategy, and I congratulate both Baroness Merron and my hon. Friend the Minister on their work on it. Since its publication yesterday, my inbox has received a number of emails from women in my constituency who suffer from endometriosis.

I wanted to highlight that, because it is very rare that constituents contact us on the publication of a Government report to comment on its contents so quickly. That shows what an absolute hotbed this issue is and how profoundly it affects people. They speak of sometimes having decades of debilitating pain, going into debt while looking for treatment, losing housing, and suffering from relationships being impacted, their jobs being undermined and experiencing a loss of income, but overall they talk about how the condition is just not recognised and how their pain goes unheard.

One of my constituents said that women need better understanding, better support and better options, and seeing that set out in black and white in a Government report has really meant so much to women. Will the Minister join me in thanking these women for their bravery in continuing to raise their voices despite their continued experience?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is unusual to receive emails saying good things. There will be challenges in this work, but it speaks to a wider issue. Many of us as women experience much of this ourselves, and we have women in Parliament who are able to articulate that. There are some fantastic women clinicians whom we have been pleased to work with and who have really pushed forward those voices as they have become more senior in the medical and clinical professions to help us with those clinical pathways. We have been able to build on all that in bringing this strategy forward.

May I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State? He was on various media yesterday and he has been working with people such as influencers to give voice to those women. I think that this is an important part of our democracy. It is worth emailing MPs—I am sorry if that elicits more emails to other Members and to my staff—because we listen and we are engaged. It matters when people raise these issues in our surgeries and come forward with them. Sometimes policy development and getting action is a struggle for all of us; it is tough and takes a long time. The process of politics sometimes takes too long, but those women have made this happen, and I thank them for it.

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

I want to ask the Minister about a particular area of women’s health and how this strategy might impact on it. This is a very personal issue for me and my wife, regarding the pathways and support for women who have colostomies or ileostomies and have lifelong stoma care. I place on record my thanks to Mr Arnab Bhowmick, who is my wife’s very long-term consultant and has performed two major surgeries on Caroline—he is known as “the fantastic Mr B” in our house and to many of his patients. We know that on those pathways and in the decisions leading up to making the decision to have a stoma, putting it off can put people’s lives at risk. How people cope with a stoma afterwards has very unique elements for women—that can be around periods, fertility and pregnancy, or around the menopause later in life. How does the Minister think the strategy will help women like my wife, the friends she has met in hospital and others on those pathways?

[Karin Smyth]

I really thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the sometimes taboo subject of stoma and stoma care and for highlighting the complexity of that for women. I send my best wishes to his wife. I did not get the name of her clinician, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for getting their name on the record; that matters when people are dealing with such an intimate sort of care.

Again, bringing voices forward is a key part of this work. The thing to bear in mind in the development of this strategy is that it is predicated on the 10-year plan and on bringing care closer to home. For example, people who have stoma and stoma care sometimes have quick questions and do not need to make an appointment to go and see somebody else, with lots of rapid appointments to and from a hospital, and all the parking, travelling and so on.

There are ways in which we can use online services and particularly neighbourhood services, where people are closer to home, to facilitate the management of care of things like stoma after people have come through or are in ongoing care. That is the sort of place where we have voices and experience informing local care, which will look different in different geographies depending on the other facilities available. I ask the hon. Gentleman to keep working with us on how that experience works out.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I welcome this strategy, having worked on maternity and medical misogyny on the Health and Social Care Committee. I will bring up the thorny issue of sexual health. In a recent sitting of the Committee, we heard that a third of sexual health doctors are set to retire in the next three years and that there are only 14 training places. The key to ensuring that we are looking after women’s sexual health is to have a pathway for new doctors. Will the Minister look at that issue and at what we can do to resolve the training blockages?

[Karin Smyth]

Yes, of course. The retirement age is a constant issue that we need to look at across a number of professions, and I am happy to come back to my hon. Friend on that. As part of our workforce plan, we are looking in particular at retaining the expertise that we have, as well as at recruiting people into new roles.

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

On behalf of the newly established APPG on urinary tract infections, which I am proud to co-chair alongside the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), I warmly welcome the Minister’s statement and this strategy. The APPG welcomes the acknowledgement that women’s health has been neglected for far too long, and we cautiously welcome the commitments to redesign urogynaecology pathways and fund a specialist centre in each region.

On behalf of the many women and, heartbreakingly, children who suffer from chronic urinary tract infections, can the Minister confirm whether those commitments cover the treatment of acute, recurrent and chronic UTIs? Will she consider our requests for support to establish agreed clinical definitions for the different types of UTIs so that we can inform long-overdue updates to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and finally end the scandal of sufferers being ignored and gaslit by medical professionals, which has happened for far too long?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), who I know cannot be here today. She has used her expertise to drive forward recognition of UTIs and incontinence—another taboo subject. We have previously had a very good debate in this Chamber on that issue, and that has all informed what we are saying.

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to move into some clinical definitions and clinical pathways. I am not going to do that, but I am very keen to hear about the work that the APPG is doing and its expertise. We will continue to hear from it and about the work that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South are leading to ensure that we make this work in reality. That is absolutely central to the strategy.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s renewed women’s health strategy and their efforts to tackle the ethnic disparities that still exist in the healthcare system. Placing women’s voices at the heart of the strategy is absolutely the right approach, but does my hon. Friend the Minister recognise that there are still persistent gaps that will require robust, targeted interventions if we are to truly address some of the racial barriers that black women still face within the healthcare system, and can she say a little bit about how the strategy will seek to address those gaps?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work she has done, both on maternity and on sight loss, and for people generally. She is a great advocate for making sure that those voices are heard, both from her own experience and through her advocacy. We are bringing together a voices group—apologies, I cannot remember exactly what we called it in the end—so that there is direct representation in Whitehall at a national level. That is one of the things we wanted to make sure was included in the strategy, and my hon. Friend Baroness Merron has worked assiduously with stakeholder groups and their representatives to ensure that we make that work, as well as on the development of online services and the work to bring things into neighbourhoods. I am very committed to working with her to make sure that that happens.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I commend the Minister on this women’s health strategy, and particularly on action 59, which is to invest in the women’s maternity and neonatal estate. I am also grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet me next week about power cuts at Eastbourne district general hospital, which have knocked out the maternity unit at various times. I am really disappointed, though, that although the invitation was originally extended to me and two guests—who included our chief executive—that has been withdrawn. Can the Minister confirm that those guests can attend, so that we can discuss how to put this strategy into action in Eastbourne?

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Member is referring to a meeting as part of my ministerial surgery, which is for Members. I will be happy to see him next week.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister and the noble Lady Merron on bringing forward this renewed strategy. My constituent Jodie Goodwin has recently been refused a hysterectomy for reasons of funding, despite the medical and surgical advice that that is what she requires to deal with her health issues. Can the Minister advise me on whether the strategy will deal with matters like this and with Jodie’s issue in particular, and would she perhaps make some time available to discuss this case in detail?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the case of her constituent Jodie and many others—such cases will be familiar to many people, and they are of course unacceptable. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that case further.

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement and the strategy. I want to speak specifically about one constituent who has contacted me, who has waited over 200 days without receiving the results of a gynaecological test—200 days of anxiety, uncertainty and delays to her treatment. Please forgive me while I read her actual words:

“this complaint is not simply about one patient having an unfortunate experience. It concerns what I believe to be a broader and deeply concerning failure in the way menstrual and gynaecological pain is recognised, assessed, investigated, and acted upon”.

I completely agree with her. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that yesterday’s renewed women’s health strategy allows us to commit to streamlining and improving gynaecological care, and can she tell me more about how she believes this will make a real difference for my constituents?

[Karin Smyth]

Again, my hon. Friend raises a shocking case on behalf of her constituents, and I agree with her and her constituent. Access to diagnostics is a key part of our 10-year health plan, which is why, as we were able to announce this week, we are rolling out more community diagnostic centres to improve diagnostic capacity more generally. I am also working with the Minister for patient safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), to look at how clinical pathways can be streamlined. That work is informing how we are developing NHS Online and making sure that we shorten those pathways, as my hon. Friend has rightly called for. All those cases—including, unfortunately, her constituent’s experience—have informed that work. We are linking our work on the 10-year-plan with that work and putting women, gynaecology and menstrual health front and centre as trailblazers, because unfortunately, those are the areas in which this work is needed. That is what this strategy does.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Minister knows, I have long campaigned around mental health. The strategy highlights that women disproportionately have poor mental health, and I welcome that recognition. However, action 49 says:

“we will improve mental health support for women and girls”,

but it does not say what the Government will do. Will they produce a strategy for delivering on this, and how will progress against this document be measured, so that we can hold the Government to account?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The document contains a long list of actions, with clear dates alongside them, so that she and others—including her constituents—can see what we are saying, and can measure progress.

[Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)]

Ignored, humiliated and misdiagnosed—these are the experiences of far too many women, and far too often, those experiences have tragic consequences. There is no more depressing example of this than the women who were prescribed the banned anti-miscarriage drug diethylstilbestrol, or DES, and the struggle that they, their children and their grandchildren have had in accessing the care and support that they need and deserve. I welcome the steps this Government have taken to improve women’s health outcomes. Will the Minister consider meeting DES campaigners to ensure that their voices and experiences are part of this strategy?

[Karin Smyth]

As we know, and as is documented in the strategy, there is sadly a long list of issues that particularly affect women that have been ignored, and it has taken far too long for women to draw attention to those issues. I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister for patient safety has met DES campaigners, and we will continue to listen to and learn from their experiences as we develop the strategy.

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, I thank the ministerial team and my honourable Friend in the other place, Baroness Merron, for the focus that they have placed on that condition in the strategy, and for putting women’s voices front and centre; too often, they have been ignored. I also commend the sterling efforts and work of the late Sir David Amess and my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) to establish the APPG in 2019 and put endometriosis firmly on the parliamentary agenda. I am delighted that a new programme to improve menstrual health education for girls is included in the strategy, but does the Minister agree that there must also be menstrual health education for all clinicians, so that symptoms can be recognised at the earliest opportunity, and women and girls can get the care they need, when they need it?

[Karin Smyth]

Again, I put on record my respect and thanks to Sir David Amess and my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar for the work that they started. I could not remember the exact year—I thought it was 2017, but my hon. Friend says that it was 2019. They raised awareness of what was a taboo only a few years ago. Many of us, including me, accepted it as normal to feel pain, whatever we did. Now, we are saying—that includes clinicians—that it is not normal. We look forward to joining in the great work that my hon. Friend and others are doing to make sure that this strategy becomes a reality, and that women see that happen very quickly.

[Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I so welcome this strategy. I am quite ashamed to say that before being elected to this place, I did not know enough about women’s health issues, and in particular the issues with pelvic and vaginal mesh—the wait for treatment and the struggle to be heard—and endometriosis; people with that condition face a wait for diagnosis and a struggle for recognition. Since I was elected, I have been contacted by tens of women across Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield, who are fighting the fight for recognition of these topics on behalf of women across the country. It is because of that that I am educated enough to stand here today. Those women feel ignored and abandoned by a health service that does not care enough about women’s health issues. Will the Minister give a commitment to campaigners such as the women in Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield who have approached me that because of this strategy, they will now be heard?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He should not apologise for not knowing before; my generation of women, and many before us, were told not to talk about this. We were told not to tell anybody, and to put up with it. We were told that every month, whatever happened to us was normal, and we should crack on. A generation of men, and all of us mothers, need to talk about this, too. We welcome all allies and spokespeople. Learning is a key part of being in this place, and my hon. Friend and others are bringing the experiences of women to this campaign. The proof is in the pudding, and we will make sure that what my hon. Friend has asked for happens.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her announcement of this strategy. In particular, I welcome the fact that the strategy says that it will be made simpler and faster for women to access the care that they need the first time they ask for it. More than eight in 10 women say that there have been times when healthcare professionals did not listen to them. One such woman was my constituent Daizy Bing, who, at the age of 17, came to me to raise her concerns. She had been told by her GP that she was too young to have an endometriosis diagnosis. Thanks to my intervention, she got a gynaecological appointment, but we all know that an MP’s surgery should not be the gateway to decent healthcare. Daizy has turned her experience into academic research. Will my hon. Friend meet her, so that her insights can inform the delivery of this ambitious and game-changing strategy?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend again raises younger women’s voices; we want to continue to hear from them. Part of this strategy is about working with the Department for Education to ensure that girls—and indeed boys—are made more aware of some of these issues. The women’s voices partnership—my apologies for not quite being able to remember its name earlier—will bring women together, including younger women and girls. If her constituent is keen to be one of those advocates, we would welcome that. We are talking about having new patient-reported experience measures and patient-reported outcome measures; we will develop those pathways over the years. Through that, women will have clear ways to navigate the system, and to put their voices forward.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Ministers for this renewed women’s health strategy for England. Two of my constituents in particular—Evie Solomon, who founded HER Circle, and Shelly Lynn—will welcome the focus on medical misogyny, and they will be watching to make sure that we deliver. It was great to hear that there were influencers at the launch of the strategy yesterday. I met one of them, Milly Evans, who is a sex educator. Is there space in the women’s health strategy and the men’s health strategy for the provision of lifelong sex education, so that we have consistent, relevant and appropriate sex education for everyone who needs it? Frankly, women who have health issues still want a fulfilling and happy sex life.

[Karin Smyth]

As I said, part of this strategy is about educating girls and boys on health and bringing together all parts of education. We are keen to work in new ways with new media, and with influencers who are positive about women and women’s health, and we will continue to do so.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for her statement, and for her ongoing commitment to ensuring that women’s health is at the heart of this Government’s agenda, which is hugely important. A bit like my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan), I was shocked by the number of women from my constituency of Harlow who came forward to tell me about their terrible experiences of being gaslit, ignored and disrespected, particularly when it came to endometriosis and the pelvic mesh scandal. My constituent Belinda, when she was 36 years old, went to the GP complaining of head pains. She was told that it was nothing and was sent home. She had actually had a stroke. She was told by the GP that she could not possibly have had a stroke at the age of 36, which was obviously incorrect. What would the Minister say to women in my constituency who have long felt ignored, disrespected and gaslit because they are women?

[Karin Smyth]

Belinda’s story is shocking, and I hope that she is doing better. This strategy is, as I said, a total game changer. In particular, the renewal of this strategy, based on the previous strategy, sends a signal to the system that we will look at the experience of women and take it into account. We will look at the budgets and the return of money to the service to improve things. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday, there is nothing quite like seeing chief executives and chief finance officers suddenly notice—perhaps they had not noticed it before; they are busy sometimes—women’s clear dissatisfaction with gynaecology. The strategy sends a positive signal to improve the service, and that puts power in the hands of women.

The other real game changer is the online service. As I said, women, wherever they live, be it in Harlow, Bristol, rural Lincolnshire or coastal areas like Thanet—I have heard from Members from so many places this afternoon—will have access to online specialist treatment. There will be a further roll-out of diagnostic services, to get that diagnostic record back into neighbourhood healthcare, so that people can be treated closer to home. Building an NHS around women, women’s needs, women’s experiences—that is the game changer promised by this Labour Government.

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

As a trained science teacher, I welcome the Minister’s news that through the strategy, the Government are launching a new programme to improve education for girls about their menstrual health, with additional funding from this year to support targeted work in schools and community settings. Does the Minister agree that this programme will support girls’ knowledge of menstrual health, and when to seek healthcare?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for his expertise, and I agree that the programme will do that. When I was first told about menstrual cycles as a young girl, I was told to hide what happened, even from my father and my brother in the household, let alone my peers in school and so on. We have come a long way, and it is good to have so many good advocates to help us. Education in school is central to that.