Menopause

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I want to start by congratulating my dear friend, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), on securing this debate and on all her brilliant work highlighting the importance of speaking about the menopause. I am very proud to be a vice chair of the APPG on menopause, which she chairs. We have done some brilliant work together and will continue to do so. We have finally lifted the lid off the menopause jar—the genie is out of the bottle. I could refer to other sayings, but it is important that finally we are ensuring this is no longer a taboo subject where we whisper, “the change”.

The issue crosses over every demographic—from royalty, including the Countess of Wessex, all the way through. I was fascinated to hear the hon. Member for Swansea East refer to it as a “posh” issue. That is so depressing, but she is absolutely right that some women feel that HRT products and help and support are available only if they are posh and can demand them. She is right that in the cost of living challenge we are now living through, too many women will be putting food on the table for their children rather than spending £18 on the vital HRT products that they need.

I welcomed the Minister and the Secretary of State for Health’s support for the private Member’s Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Swansea East. They agreed to her proposals, but it is disappointing that we have to wait until April 2023, given that there are women in England who are desperately waiting for an annual prescription.

It was interesting to listen to the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). The issue applies to all four nations, and it is a shame that England is still the poor relation of the four. She reminded me of a close friend of mine who lives in Northern Ireland and is a constituent of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). She was telling me a few weeks ago of all the symptoms she had. She had been to her GP in Northern Ireland and he was suggesting antidepressants. I begged her and said, “Please, you are 51. You are going through the menopause. Go back to that GP and demand.” She did, and now she is on HRT. She is an educated woman who has been to university and has a high-profile job, but she still has to beg her GP to take her seriously. That is unacceptable. There is more to do to ensure that GPs across the four nations have the right advice and training.

I want to highlight Pausitivity, an organisation I know very well and whose posters I have previously mentioned in the Chamber. I wrote to the Minister recently and I hope she will respond positively. We need to support Pausitivity’s Know Your Menopause campaign. Its leaflets are a signpost for women and highlight symptoms, so that they can go back to their GPs and demand support and help.

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about Pausitivity. Claire Hattrick from Hampshire has published a whole book about self-help. There is a brilliant case for the Department of Health and Social Care to consider making small funding streams available to ensure that the work of all those smaller, regional self-help and campaign groups can be disseminated much more widely. All of us have friends, like my hon. Friend’s friend in Northern Ireland, who have not had the confidence, knowledge or expertise to go to their GP and say, “This is what I have got. Please can I have?” We need to spread the information. Perhaps DHSC should look at how it can fund that.

[Nickie Aiken]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I wrote in my letter to the Minister that we need to support organisations such as Pausitivity so that women can use them as a signpost. Its posters are brilliant. They are in Urdu, Punjabi, French, Dutch, German, English and also, as the hon. Member for Swansea East will be delighted to know, Cymraeg. Let us support women from all walks of life, and let us also support families.

This morning I went to talk to a group of year 10 pupils at Pimlico Academy. They asked me what I was doing this afternoon and I said that I would be speaking in the menopause debate. I said, “It is really important that you guys, aged 15—boys and girls—are aware.” I said to the girls, “PMT and periods are tough enough, but you wait: the menopause is something to really know about. You have to know for your mums who are going through it, or are about to go through it, and for your grandmothers and your aunties. It is really important that you know about the menopause so that you can support them and so that you know that when they are screaming at you, there is probably a reason for it. It is not because of you, but because they are probably having a really tough time because they haven’t slept for five days, they feel like they are having an out-of-body experience, they do not feel themselves and then they take that out on their families.” It is really important that husbands, partners, brothers and fathers also understand what women are going through.

We have come a long way. The Government have been listening. I know that the Minister takes a lead on this issue and I absolutely welcome the Government’s real emphasis on it, but we still have issues with a shortage of HRT products. When I went to get my prescription a few months ago, I was told that I could not have my Oestrogel because it is not in supply at the moment. I was really worried. I have one bottle left and am squeezing every single ounce of it. I hope to God that it will be back in when I go back to the GP next week. I urge the Minister to do all she can to make sure that the products get back on the shelves. I fear for my Chief Whip and my Whip if I do not get my HRT product. I am just putting that out there to the Minister—you have been warned.

More seriously, there is so much more that we have to do on education and for businesses. I am extremely proud that this week the Cabinet Office—the Minister was also at this event—became the largest organisation to sign the menopause workplace pledge. More than 1,000 organisations have now done so. That is a start, and it is amazing. The Government are actually taking the lead, but as many have said here today, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North, there is much more that each Government Department can do—like not working in silos. We know that when Governments work in silos, nothing gets done. There has to be a holistic approach. Let us get this done.

It is very important to ensure that women are aware of the symptoms of menopause, but also that they can be symptoms of other conditions. I have recently been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, and the symptoms are very much related to the menopause. Although I may have been going through the menopause, I wonder whether the vast majority of my issues over the past two or three years were because of my thyroid problem. I am now on thyroxine, and it is changing my life, but women need to understand that their symptoms might not just be from the menopause. GPs have to understand that, too. Again, I would like there to be more information and for GPs to have a better understanding of those issues.

To conclude, being in politics can be very difficult. We have so many arguments, and there is so much that can divide us, but women’s health—particularly issues such as the menopause—unites us. We can see Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English MPs here today in support of getting more help for the menopause. That is what makes it great to be a Member of Parliament—we can come together and join forces to ensure that we support women and men in all walks of life. The menopause revolution has only just begun. It is only the start, but I am sure that, working together, we will ensure that women have the products and support they need to carry on with their lives. The menopause is a change. It is the midpoint in our lives. It should never be the end of women’s lives. I feel that I am just beginning my life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

Thank you, Mr Robertson. I will not take the hour that is left for my summing up, although I could start all over again.

I want to make just a few points. First, I thank everybody for being here and for sharing their personal stories—I am looking in a certain direction. I know it is painful and hard, but when people in this place talk about their personal experiences, it makes us look like what we are—real people with real lives and real feelings—to the outside world. That gives confidence to women out there who are thinking that nobody cares and nobody is listening. Unless we talk to those women, we will not know how they feel. When Nicola Sturgeon appears on “Loose Women” and talks about her menopause, it is inspirational for women right across the UK. When a certain Jim Shannon gets a shout-out as a menopause ambassador on “Loose Women”, it gives confidence to women across the UK that we politicians are listening.

The celebrities who are coming in on Monday are really nervous about coming to Westminster. They think they are coming into a world where they are expected to perform in a particular way, and that we will all be looking at them and thinking, “What do you know about politics?” Through the work they have done, they have proved that they may do politics better than we do, and that they have used their platform to change actually things, without making it party political, which we try not to do on this subject. They are using their platform to share really important messages and really personal stories, in an industry where, traditionally, nobody wants to admit to being a certain age or to potentially being menopausal, because they would be seen as getting on a bit. I really want to thank them.

One thing that it is really important to say is that I would like to see the Davina effect enshrined in legislation—perhaps we can have a show of hands on that—because Davina McCall has played a huge role. I do not think any of us could really have done what we have done without Davina’s documentaries and the work she has done.

[Nickie Aiken]

On that point, rather than having the Davina McCall effect, perhaps we should all write to whomever we are meant to write to, to ask whether Davina McCall should become a Dame.