Women’s Health Strategy

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

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”.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for tabling the Statement. I am sure that the ambitions for the renewed women’s health strategy will be supported by noble Lords from all Benches. I know that the Minister recognises that women have too often felt unheard, as conditions such as endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain go underdiagnosed.

There was emphasis in the Statement on listening to women and tackling entrenched inequalities. This is, of course, welcome. We support the focus on a shift from treatment to prevention and from hospital to community, as well as the ambition to unlock the potential of digital innovation through NHS Online. I also thank the Minister for acknowledging that these initiatives build on work undertaken by previous Governments.

However, many women will judge this strategy not by its intentions and words but by whether it leads to tangible improvements in their day-to-day experience of care. All Governments announce grand strategies, but sometimes fail to deliver. While many of these individual announcements are welcome, I hope the Minister will allow me to ask for further clarity on a few points.

First, on waiting times and access to care, it is encouraging that waiting times for overall gynaecology have begun to move in the right direction, but many women are still waiting too long for diagnosis and treatment. We know what that leads to—a range of conditions, often worsening outcomes and poor quality of life. Can the Minister tell us what the department is doing to speed up the whole pathway from when the patient first presents through to treatment? How will it ensure that there is greater transparency for patients, so that they know where they are in the queue and how long they really have to wait, rather than estimates?

Secondly, the strategy rightly places an emphasis on listening to women and acting on their experiences. I am sure that noble Lords across the House share that objective. However, experience suggests that, unless you have clear structures for accountability, good intentions do not always translate into change. How will the department ensure that any feedback gathered in a patient consultation is not just perfunctory but consistently acted upon, and that it reflects a diversity of women’s experiences? There will be a range of experiences; it will not be the same for all women, especially for those who face additional barriers to being heard.

I will give your Lordships a couple of examples from my time in the department. I wonder what progress has been made. I remember when a young official came up to me and told me about her friend, a young Black lady, who had lost her baby. When they asked for the investigation and the paperwork, it had magically disappeared. How do we make sure that that sort of incident does not happen again, that there is real accountability and that there is no gaslighting, particularly for women from ethnic minority communities?

Another example comes from when I spoke to the baby loss charity Sands. Of course, we value the work that the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, is doing on maternity care. I recently received an email from a lady whom I met at Sands, which said: “For almost three years, my case was handled by the same caseworker. Of course, sometimes I questioned their competence, but at least the caseworker knew my case and they knew about things. And, despite being advised that my complaint was at its final stages, I’ve just been told that it’s been reallocated to a new case handler. Someone has to relearn the case, but has not yet been given a date for when that case will be heard”. I wonder what the Minister’s department can do to ensure that people who have suffered terribly, and are still suffering physically and emotionally from what has happened, really get the justice that they deserve.

Let us move on to patient safety and redress. The Statement refers to unacceptable experiences of women harmed in the past. As the House will be aware, the recommendations of the Hughes report were intended to provide redress for medical interventions such as the pelvic mesh, sodium valproate and hormone pregnancy tests, but many women are still waiting for some form of redress or help. Often, they are racking up bills, such as taxi bills to go to appointments, and many of them are still in pain.

When I was in the department and I was being asked the question, in the Minister’s place, I would go back to the department and ask what we are doing about this. The first answer I would be given was that I should leave it to the responsible Minister as I was the Minister responsible for technology, innovation and life sciences. When I probed again over time, I was told by one official that the Treasury does not like to write blank cheques. That is understandable—the Treasury is the guardian of the national finances. I used to ask whether anyone was doing any work on how much this would cost so that we could then present to the Treasury the cost of providing some form of redress.

The Hughes report suggested £20,000 each for mesh victims and £100,000 for sodium valproate victims. We welcome the fact that 100 of the 10,000 women who suffered from the pelvic mesh issue have received some payout from manufacturers. What about the others? I am told that many women missed out due to limitations for civil claims. What can the Minister’s department do to help those poor women who are still suffering and make sure that more women receive redress as quickly as possible? As a result of the Hughes report, we now know that it is not a blank cheque. We know that there will be negotiations between the Department of Health and the Treasury. Can the Minister update us on those discussions so we can better understand whether these women are finally going to achieve some form of justice?

Going forward, we need not only to make up for the mistakes of the past that have occurred under all Governments but to address the outstanding issues, making sure that those women who suffered are receiving long-term support and learning the lessons so that if, sadly, this ever happens again, we know how to address those issues and give the appropriate care, compassion and redress to those who suffer.

Overall, there are a number of different issues covered by the women’s health strategy. I know some noble Lords will be concerned that, although it is wonderful to have a grand, overall strategy, what about the individual interventions that we need from the departments, clinicians and others? How do we deliver on all those various issues that women suffer from to make sure that patients across the country—whatever party they support or however they feel—particularly female patients, believe that the renewed women’s health strategy will finally deliver a safe system of health for all of them and justice for those who have suffered in the past?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and I, too, welcome the women’s health strategy, as it includes many important objectives. In communities up and down the country, we have seen the devastating toll of sustained failures to invest in and deliver better women’s health. Women’s lives, families and economic productivity are damaged when they do not receive treatment in a timely way. Indeed, this also happens when menopause difficulties are ignored. This is because vital services remain understaffed and underfunded, while women and girls go without the care they need.

In 2022, we had the previous women’s health strategy, which had similar important goals to this one with similar delivery mechanisms and the same reliance on local systems to make it happen. Yet four years on, the problems remain stubbornly in place, with half a million women suffering long waits for gynaecology, patchy access to services, women reporting that they are not listened to, women not being given pain relief when they need it and serious conditions diagnosed too late. These facts must give the Government pause for thought that perhaps things need to be done differently this time.

Medical misogyny is still a perverse and unacceptable norm in the health service and that requires a culture change, which is notoriously difficult to achieve. How does the Minister’s department plan to go about it?

This strategy is being implemented when the NHS is already stretched and ICBs are facing cuts while, at the same time, taking on some of the responsibilities of the disappearing NHS England. Now we also have soaring inflation, due to Trump’s war in Iran. In this climate, can we reasonably expect the strategy to deliver meaningful change? I really hope so.

Although the issues affecting women’s health generally are numerous, the NHS failures in maternity services are the most widely reported and deeply shocking. Review after review has uncovered the same failures across the country: a failure to listen to women, a lack of time for training, inadequate staffing levels leading to staff burnout, a lack of proper assessment, poor management of risk and a failure to learn lessons when things go wrong. All this is leading to a rise in perinatal mortality, with the figures showing inequality between different groups, such as those on lower incomes and some ethnic minority groups. How will that be tackled by the strategy?

That is why the Liberal Democrats recently launched our maternity secure package to make Britain the safest place in the world to give birth. We want every maternity unit in the country brought up to a good or outstanding level of safety. That could be done by guaranteeing one-to-one midwifery and specialist doctors on every unit. Will the Minister consider incorporating these proposals into the new strategy?

On medical misinformation, many people now get their health advice online, particularly via social media. Long waits for NHS services and GP appointments are pushing people into getting their so-called information this way, but advice on those platforms does not adhere to clinical standards or guidelines, which is leading to rampant medical disinformation, with sometimes disastrous results. There is some evidence that this is a particular issue in women’s health, where gaps in scientific knowledge and public awareness are being exploited. Does the Minister have any plans to tackle that?

It is possible to fight back. In order to be helpful, we are calling for the following for the Minister’s consideration. The first is a new kitemark for health apps and digital tools that are clinically proven to help people to lead healthier lives, regulated by the GMC. The second is a big effort by the NHS, with a ring-fenced budget, to dominate the health advice social media ecosystem and algorithms, with clinically approved information in plain English. That could improve patient care and save staff time and costs. The third is a new verification requirement for any social media account claiming to be written by a medical professional.

I have a few more questions before I finish. In line with the 10-year health plan’s objective to make care more local, is the Minister confident that women in every area will benefit from a family health hub, as promised, without the threat of closure or cuts, especially in this time of reduced resources for ICBs?

How will the new system linking feedback from patients to provider funding work? Will the results for each unit be made public? Will improved staffing be funded to achieve the promise that women no longer face long waits for diagnosis for conditions such as endometriosis? Will we be able to hear from the Minister in the education department about the promised menstrual education programme to ensure that girls are better equipped to recognise the difference between healthy and unhealthy periods, and will the programme be evaluated by the girls receiving it? Finally and most importantly, will women themselves be involved in developing the implementation plans for the new measures in the strategy and coproduction of their communication with other women?