Women’s Health Strategy

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the advance copy of the statement. I wish every woman in the House and throughout the country a very happy International Women’s Day.

It is welcome that the Government want to understand the plight of women throughout the country, but although the Minister said that this strategy is the first of its kind, in reality it is not. We heard much that was in this announcement when the Government launched the women’s mental health taskforce in 2017. If the Government took this matter seriously, it would be a first. The Minister responsible for mental health at the time, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), said:

“This report is a call to action for all providers, commissioners and practitioners across the health care system to drive forward the ethos of trauma- and gender-informed mental health care.”

That echoes what the Minister just said, so why are the Government asking the exact same questions four years later?

A multitude of health concerns are unique to women and are often overlooked. In hospital, I hold the hands of women in their darkest times: young women and girls presenting with eating disorders; trans women admitted after suicide attempts and substance abuse because they had been made to feel as though they do not belong; and women of colour presenting far too late with conditions that could have been easily treatable if they had found healthcare more accessible. I meet many women victims of domestic violence. They use healthcare services more than non-abused women, so I hope to see the Government’s upcoming violence against women and girls strategy address their needs.

The coronavirus crisis has had a disastrous impact on many women, and I have been honoured to listen to colleagues share their heartbreaking experiences of baby loss. My heart breaks for all those women who have had to go through that alone during the pandemic. What support will be offered to women who experience baby loss without their partners by their side? Within maternity services there are huge inequalities. The Minister is right to highlight the fact that black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth, and I welcome the launch of the forum, but the Government have known about these inequalities for years, so why has there not been action sooner? The Government are running a separate sexual and reproductive health strategy; would it not have made more sense to bring it, as part of that working, into this? A part of this which is widely stigmatised is the menopause. How will the Government be seeking to engage women who have to go through difficulties throughout the menopause?

The “Five Year Forward View for Mental Health” recommended that by 2020-21, in England, 30,000 more women each year would be able

“to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period”

and said that that was important. Can the Minister tell us whether that target has been met? Today, it is huge news that a woman of colour has spoken about her mental health struggles during pregnancy. Many women face difficulties but stay silent, afraid to seek help. With stigma attached to mental illness, the Government must ensure that evidence is collected from all of our ethnically diverse communities.

Women are still being misdiagnosed in 2021. With male bodies being seen as the default body, there is a huge historical data gap in understanding women’s health needs. It is shocking that women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack simply because our symptoms differ from those of men. What research will the Government commission to bridge that divide?

Finally, pay is a gendered issue. Women are 82% of the social care workforce and 90% of the nurses. Can the Minister justify the real-terms pay cut to our frontline NHS staff? Will she end poverty wages in social care? We need healthcare to work for every woman across the UK—young and old, white and women of colour, cisgender and transgender. We cannot wait any longer. Women’s health and wellbeing should not be an annual PR exercise. We need action and we need action now.

[Ms Dorries]

I join the hon. Lady in wishing every woman across the world a happy International Women’s Day. She opened by talking about the mental health taskforce and saying it is not the first of its kind, but it absolutely is. It was a five-year project that the NHS used to bring together women and organisations from across the healthcare sector to develop a mental health plan—a five-year view—which it did and reported on. As she knows, partly as a result of that, we now have the long-term plan in mental health.

The hon. Lady also spoke passionately, as she always does, about the patients she meets as part of her work and the women who are suffering from eating disorders—sadly, that has been a tragic cost of covid. We know that two groups have been affected by the past 12 months in the mental health sphere: people, including women, with pre-existing mental illness; and, in particular, young women aged 15 to 26, in whom we have seen an explosion in the number of referrals—I believe the figure is 22% for young women seeking help with eating disorders. We have committed funding during the spending review, when £500 million was announced, and I announced £79 million on Friday. Part of that is going to deal with the problems that we have as a result of the pandemic, and with young women and girls—and in some cases young men—who are suffering from eating disorders.

The hon. Lady talked about the stillbirth and neonatal target of halving the number of stillbirths by 2025. We are way ahead of our target on that. The Office for National Statistics published new data last week, and I believe we are looking towards a 30% figure already. We are way ahead of target, and that is a result of the measures that have been put in place in the maternity safety arena, including the saving babies’ lives care bundle and the early notification scheme.

I reiterate that what we are announcing today is a call for evidence from women everywhere in the UK: from every organisation and every friend, every partner, every family of every woman.[Official Report, 12 March 2021, Vol. 690, c. 5MC.] The link has been published today. I published it on the Government website and it is on the Department of Health and Social Care website and on my Twitter feed. It is a link that women can easily access using their phones or their laptops, and it takes a few minutes to complete. We want to develop the first ever women’s health strategy within the Department of Health and Social Care that will deal with all the issues—there are too many for me to talk about now—and all the ways in which women have been affected. These will include research funding and cohorts of trials not using women, using all the information that we have from Paterson and Cumberlege and from women stating clearly that women are not listened to in the healthcare sector. To address that, we need to hear not just from the Paterson women and the mesh women who spoke to Cumberlege; we need to hear from all women everywhere, and that is why we have launched this call for evidence today, to develop this strategy before the end of the year.