Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to tackle health inequalities affecting women.

We have committed to develop a 10-year plan to deliver a National Health Service fit for the future. We will carefully be considering policies, including those that impact women’s health, as we develop the plan.

We want to ensure that the 10-Year Health Plan reflects the diversity of the people who use the NHS every day, and it is important that everyone can have their say as we develop it. The Department has held ministerial roundtables on women’s health as well as maternity and neonatal care, attended by service users, senior clinicians, and a range of charity partners.

We are committed to the Women’s Health Strategy and are continuing work to deliver it. For example, the strategy had an ambition to improve workplace support for menopause, and through the Employment Rights Bill we are making this a reality, by requiring large employers to publish gender equality action plans, including how they are supporting employees through the menopause. Women’s health hubs provide integrated women’s health services in the community, and have a key role tackling health inequalities faced by women. As of December 2024, 39 out of 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) reported to NHS England that they had at least one operational women’s health hub. We continue to engage with and encourage ICBs to use the learning from the women’s health hubs pilots to improve local delivery of services to women.

We are also working with NHS England on how to take forward the Women’s Health Strategy, by aligning it to the Government’s Missions and 10-Year Health Plan.