Menopause (Support and Services) Bill

Peter Dowd Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

These are some of the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) when she launched the all-party group on menopause:

“I’m determined to change the woeful support offered to women…This menopause revolution will bring an end to women’s suffering.”

She also said:

“I know that we can deliver legislation that will make a real difference to women’s lives.”

I commend my hon. Friend on those words and, more importantly, her determination to put them into action by introducing this Bill. I hope to be just one of the many hon. Members who help her achieve her aim to

“bring an end to women’s suffering.”

My hon. Friend is well aware that this Bill is just the start of the process. It is a foundation for much of the rest of the work that has to follow. It is the beginning of a process that will take a great deal of time, effort, endeavour and resource. This House can help in that challenging process by supporting the Bill, and the Government can also help by supporting it.

We are not short of experience, evidence and real-life stories of the impact and effect perimenopause and the menopause can have on women. They are not statistics on a spreadsheet. Those women are our wives, mothers, daughters, aunties, sisters, nieces, friends, colleagues, and constituents.

Millions of women will need the support of everyone in this House to ensure that they get what they are entitled to: not indulgence, but that which is their right. They have a right to live a life that is not bedevilled by the vicissitudes of the menopause or exacerbated through ignorance, lack of support, the unspoken—“let’s not talk about it” approach—that we have seen on this issue for so long. They have a right to a life free from the impacts of the menopause such as anxiety, depression, tiredness and the myriad other challenges women face, many outlined by hon. Members today.

Last week my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) rightly raised the issue of osteoporosis in the debate on menopause and she rightly did so again today. She highlighted the link between the menopause and osteoporosis.

I want to touch on three areas to reinforce what Members have said today. In the first instance, the primary aim of the Bill relates to prescription charges. This is a major anomaly that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has raised time and again. It cannot be right that this crucial health support is out of synch on prescription charges when compared to other forms of non-charging for prescriptions. For example, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) referred to erectile dysfunction and issues around contraception. This is all the more important when the impact menopause has on women for years, and the deleterious knock-on effect it has on family life and work life for so many women and their families, is clear.

Secondly, as I alluded to earlier, this is just the start of a process, not the end or the fulfilment of a process. There needs to be a reappraisal of the training given to clinicians both pre-qualification and post-qualification to ensure that this significant health issue, which affects millions of women to one degree or another, is given the priority it deserves. It is not an attempt to point the finger at hard-working and in many cases overworked clinicians, as others have said; it is an attempt to recognise that women have been ignored, not understood and passed over, and that other issues around their perceived health have not been linked to the menopause when they should have been.

Thirdly, I want to make a suggestion. Given that it is patently obvious that women go through the menopause with varying degrees of intensity and impact on their health, what about a menopause health check for women starting at the perimenopausal stage and into the menopausal phase? From the evidence of the all-party parliamentary group on menopause we know that many women themselves were unaware of the symptoms linked to menopause. NICE guidance setting out an holistic approach to support for woman during both phases would be welcome, as the current guidance is not necessarily as comprehensive as it could be. The last guidance was updated in 2019, as far as I can tell. Perhaps a more substantive refresh would be appropriate.

In conclusion, the impact of the menopause on so many women—an impact often hidden, misunderstood, neglected, ignored and misunderstood—really does need a thorough reappraisal, not just in a narrow or focused medical way but with a cultural sea change in attitudes to the menopause and its impacts. Some of them are life changing and they need to be dealt with right across society in schools, health services and workplaces.

I believe the Bill goes some way to address some of the issues we are debating today, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East said, nothing short of a menopause revolution will suffice to address this challenge, which is not going away. As a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on menopause and a co-sponsor of the Bill, and as someone who has been conscripted into it, not necessarily as a warrior—[Laughter.]—I exhort Members to support it. The Government and Members right across the House can play their part by supporting my hon. Friend’s endeavours. I support the Bill and I really do implore everybody to do so.