Westminster Hall

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 24 March 2026

[Sir John Hayes in the Chair]

Sudden Unexpected Death in Childhood

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

09:31

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John, and to open this important debate. Today we are discussing a category of child death that has previously been described in this room as

“one of the most serious medical phenomena in our country”.—[Official Report, 17 January 2023; Vol. 726, c. 88WH.]

Sudden unexplained death in childhood is the fourth leading cause of death in children aged one to 18. Since Parliament last debated this issue in 2023, in the UK around 120 children who appeared perfectly healthy have died suddenly. That is the equivalent of four full classrooms of pre-school and school-aged children—four classrooms of lives cut short without explanation.

For families, the devastation after a child dies is immediate and lifelong. What makes SUDC uniquely cruel is not only the loss, but the absence of answers. Why did those children die? I can only imagine the pain of that. When we lost our daughter Mallorie to Edwards’ syndrome, we at least had the comfort of knowing why and what was coming. We knew there was nothing more we could do. Families experiencing SUDC have none of that. It is brutal. We cannot continue to tell grieving parents, “I am sorry; we simply don’t know why your child died.” As a society we have a responsibility to do all we can to find the answers to prevent future deaths. That is why today we ask the Government to lead the search for answers through a co-ordinated national plan.

First, let us be clear about what SUDC is and what it is not. Sudden unexplained death in childhood is the sudden unexpected death of a child over one year old that remains unexplained after a full investigation. Cases do not involve crime, terminal illness, diagnosed epilepsy, cardiac conditions or tragic accidents. The children appear healthy. They fall suddenly ill or go to sleep and never wake up. Parents, grandparents and siblings are left asking, “Why did this happen? Could it happen again? Is there a genetic risk? Will my other children die? Should we risk another pregnancy?” Those are questions that currently no one can answer.

At the heart of today’s debate and our discussion is a little boy named Frankie Grogan. Frankie was three years old: bright, curious and full of energy with a particular love of giraffes. His family had every reason to believe that they would watch him grow and thrive. Instead, he went to sleep and did not wake up. The night before, Frankie was excited that his father would be running the Manchester 10k the next day. He briefly woke at 4.30 am asking for water. A few hours later, he was found to be still and unresponsive. Despite a thorough investigation, no cause of death could be identified. That happened in 2019 and Frankie’s family, who are here today, still do not know why.

In the midst of unimaginable grief, Frankie’s grandfather, Brian Topping, came to see me. He did not ask for sympathy; he asked for structure, leadership, co-ordination and a plan. Frankie’s story reminds us that behind every statistic is a child with a name, a personality and a future that should have been. It is because of Frankie and the determination of his family that the debate is taking place today. Through SUDC UK, families, clinicians and researchers have united around the conviction that unexplained should never mean unexamined. We know that research and awareness raising, backed up by national leadership, can make a profound difference. In other areas of childhood death, when priorities are clear, progress follows.

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this important debate and for his very moving speech. I recently had the honour of meeting Eleanor Wroath, who is here in the Gallery today with her son Sam. Eleanor lost her daughter Miranda, aged 18 months, in 2008. Since then, she has been a tireless campaigner for raising awareness of sudden unexplained death in childhood. She and Sam will be running the Great North Run in support of the charity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as highlighted by campaigners such as Eleanor and Sam, there is an urgent need for more specialist research to understand the causes of and the risk factors underlying SUDC?

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Order. Given the seriousness of the subject and of the hon. Lady’s intervention, I let that go, but interventions should generally be slightly more pithy.

[Andy MacNae]

Yes, of course I agree, and I am coming on to the research. We simply owe families answers and our best efforts to find those answers.

As I was saying, we know that research and awareness raising, backed up by national leadership, can make a profound difference, as it has in other areas. When priorities are clear, progress does follow. For example, research and safer sleep campaigns have significantly reduced unexplained infant deaths—known as sudden infant death syndrome, formerly cot death. About 200 babies die from SIDS each year compared with 40 older children from SUDC, yet there has been 100 times more research into SIDS than SUDC, which receives only a fraction of the attention.

Peter Fleming CBE, the clinical lead for the SIDS Back to Sleep campaign and a scientific adviser to SUDC UK, has said:

“Research into unexpected deaths in infancy has led to an 80% reduction in such deaths over the past 30 years in the UK. Unexpected deaths in older children are less common, much less well understood, and to date little research has been conducted in the UK to try to understand or prevent such deaths… I am convinced that with the right research we will soon be able to prevent many deaths”

of older children. The families here today are not asking for guarantees—they understand that science takes time—but simply asking for this issue to be treated with the urgency it deserves.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate on what is an incredibly emotional topic. It is difficult to imagine parents having grief beyond what he is describing. On the research, does he agree that while no guarantees can be given, if Governments put more money into it, families will understand that and will see progress and, we hope, a better outcome?

[Andy MacNae]

Precisely, and that would be to treat this issue with the importance, urgency and focus that it deserves. The very fact that most research is now charity-led is quite revealing.

This research includes the Pioneer study—a population-based investigation to reduce sudden unexplained deaths in childhood—at the University of Bristol, which is beginning to analyse national mortality data and incorporate family-led research priorities. Science has advanced: genomics, cardiology, neuropathology and data science now offer real hope that the causes that were once thought unknowable may finally be within reach. However, scientific possibility alone is not enough. Findings from the UK’s Pioneer study, alongside the growing body of global evidence on SUDC, must be properly considered and applied. They should inform linked datasets and guide action by organisations such as Genomics England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS.

The opportunity is there, but right now we rely far too much on this limited charity-funded research. If we are ever to shift the dial, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) said, we need a national plan delivering co-ordinated, planned actions that enable and accelerate meaningful projects.

[Sarah Edwards (Tamworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward such an important debate. Constituents of mine have asked me to attend not just to thank him, but to support his calls for a co-ordinated strategy. They lost their son when he was three, so they share all such families’ feelings that more needs to be done to get to the bottom of understanding the unimaginable tragedy that many parents have suffered, so there is a bit more closure.

[Andy MacNae]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which again focuses on the need for co-ordination in the effort to meet the scale of this challenge.

One of the most compelling issues requiring investigation is the association between SUDC and febrile seizures. National and international data show that 30% of SUDC cases involve a history of febrile seizures—10 times higher than in the general population. Frankie Grogan had 12 seizures before he died, but he was never reviewed by a specialist. At this point, it is really important to stress that febrile seizures are very common and SUDC is rare, but the persistence of this correlation—known before the last debate—demands investigation. A national plan must accelerate understanding of the link and determine whether children who have repeated febrile seizures, or a particular subset of affected children, need different pathways of care.

We must also improve public information. Information for families is inconsistent and, at times, invisible. Leaflets on febrile seizures vary significantly across NHS trusts; some fail to mention that seizures can occur during sleep or that monitoring options exist. SUDC itself—including the 60% of cases with no seizure history—is missing from the NHS website. After the 2023 debate, a token reference was added to the SIDS page, but then removed. Imagine a family receiving a post-mortem conclusion of SUDC but finding nothing when they search the NHS website. That is clearly unacceptable, but something that the Government can easily fix.

There has been welcome progress in other areas. The national child mortality database is a world-leading resource. Since the previous debate, the NCMD has created SUDC-specific forms and launched pathways for genomics and cardiac screening. SUDC UK, a charity founded only in 2017, has helped to ensure that families have access to whole genome sequencing through the R441 pathway. That advocacy was born out of what Nikki Speed, chief executive of SUDC UK, describes as the “paralysing fear” that she and many families carry every day. She explained to me that for years after her loss, she got little sleep, because she was constantly having to have a hand on her surviving children to be sure they were alive and well.

That fear leads families to delay trying for another child, even though a new life could be a source of hope and healing amid loss. It is completely rational for a parent to fear, if one of their seemingly healthy children has died without explanation, that their other seemingly healthy children could also be at risk. That is why genomic and cardiac screening is so important: it not only informs research but protects surviving siblings. For some families, genetic analysis has revealed risks requiring vital preventive treatment, yet those crucial tests are currently available only after the post-mortem process concludes, which brings me to the next point.

Paediatric pathology is in crisis, as summarised in a recent report by the Royal College of Pathologists. Families experiencing SUDC routinely wait nine to 12 months, or sometimes longer, for a post-mortem conclusion. During that time, they live in fear—fear for their surviving children, fear of future pregnancies, fear of the unknown. Their grief is suspended and their lives are on hold. Only after that traumatic wait can they finally access genomic testing or cardiac screening to safeguard their children.

After speaking with Brian and with Nikki, I would like to outline the typical timeline for a family affected by SUDC. Your child is fine. Then they die, leaving you traumatised and in shock. The child is taken away from you, and you have no control over what is happening. The ensuing process is statutory, but the response is based on evidence from infant death and so is suboptimal. After scary interactions with the police and in deep shock, you return home to deafening silence or to the child’s siblings, to whom you must tell the very worst news. Then you wait. You do not wait one week or two. You do not wait a month or even six. You most likely wait nine to 12 months. If the pathology is complex, you wait even longer. Throughout the whole wait, you are scared for your other children and scared to get pregnant again. You put your life and your grief on hold. Only then, often about a year later, do you receive the post-mortem report. You have been desperately waiting for this moment, but now it is here it brings back all the trauma of losing your child, and only now are you eligible to see whether anything hereditary is putting other family members at risk.

This is inhumane. When we lost our daughter, we had the answers right away, yet the trauma is still with us. I cannot fathom what it would be like to sit in deafening silence for months, and the long-term damage that that could do. This must change. A national plan should establish faster pathways for cases in which timely information directly affects vulnerable bereaved families and child safety.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The hon. Member is certainly making a very powerful speech on this issue. On 7 January 2024, Teddy Jason Williamson, aged just seven weeks and from my constituency, died of sudden infant death syndrome. Does the hon. Member agree that more practical support is required? Yes, we need research, but we also need there to be practical support: bereavement nurses, dedicated suites in hospitals, and counselling support post the death of the child.

[Andy MacNae]

Yes. I will touch on that in a moment. It is part of a wider picture of bereavement support and bereavement pathways nationally. From baby or infant loss to unexplained death in childhood, bereavement services are patchy and in many cases far below the standards that we need to see. We need to make that service universal.

Let us move on to another cause of trauma: child death investigations. This issue is wider than SUDC but has profound impacts. Current national guidelines—the statutory guidance and joint agency guidelines—are built on historical evidence from infant deaths and have not been updated since the new pathways for genetics and cardiology were launched. That is important as it may affect inequity of care and access to these important tests. Guidelines should be updated to reflect new evidence and current pathology timeframes, and any consultation on those updates should include charities such as SUDC UK, which supports families of children up to 18 years old.

From investigation to family support, NCMD data tells us that 30% of all child deaths are sudden and unexpected, and a fifth of families leave A&E with no understanding of why their child has died. While consistency has improved since the last debate, the quality of bereavement support remains deeply uneven, as the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) has raised. Families affected by SUDC often experience complicated grief with severe and long-lasting consequences for parents and siblings, and this requires specialist support. The NIHR-funded Quintet project and the wider strategic partnership for sudden child death will soon provide evidence-based recommendations for supporting those families. These should be incorporated into a national plan.

To conclude, what is lacking is not expertise nor compassion; rather, it is co-ordination and leadership. I am calling for a Government-led national plan for sudden unexplained death in childhood. That would turn the issues that I have raised into strategic objectives with clear timelines, milestones and measurable outcomes. It should be developed alongside families, clinicians and researchers, and report back to Parliament every two years. Such a plan would send a powerful message: these children matter, their deaths are not footnotes, and unexplained does not mean unimportant. My thanks to Brian Topping, Nikki Speed, the courageous families here today and all those who have worked tirelessly for progress and understanding. I hope that this debate can play a part in delivering that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob—and I can see that they are doing so. A number have indicated that they desire to speak. Given the seriousness and sensitivity of the subject, I want to be able to get them all in. Please bear that in mind when you contribute.

09:46

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this really important debate.

There are a few meetings that Members of Parliament never forget. Over three years ago, in January 2023, I met my constituents Cheryl and Darren Midgley for the first time. On Christmas day 2022, Cheryl and Darren put their loving, happy and healthy 16-month-old son Jack to bed. The family had enjoyed the best Christmas, but when Darren, the father, went into Jack’s room the following morning, he quickly realised he had gone. He said that, that day, their “world fell apart”.

Christmas in the Midgley household is never just a day. Jack, with his brother Louis, saw Santa four times. They had had the best Christmas. On Boxing day, when Darren cracked open Jack’s door and went into the room, he said there was perfect silence. He walked over to his son’s cot, but as soon as Darren put his hand on his back, it was cool. From what Darren saw at that point, he knew that his baby son Jack had gone.

Jack was taken to Martin House children’s hospice in Wetherby, where he was cared for in one of its special cooled bedrooms. Darren described the hospice’s services as an anchor for the family. The fact that Jack could stay in one of the cooled bedrooms meant the world. Darren said:

“It was a huge comfort to us to know Jack was being looked after in a bedroom, in his Christmas pyjamas, and the staff would be there to talk to him and put his night light on.”

The family spent five days at Martin House until the post-mortem could take place, but the results were inconclusive.

Since meeting Cheryl and Darren three years ago, I have kept in touch with them, and I have been truly blown away by their resilience and mental fortitude, as well as that of their eldest son Louis. They have worked tirelessly to raise awareness to help others, despite their own grief, including by completing a 127-mile bike ride along the Leeds to Liverpool canal path, raising over £6,000 for the Airedale Hospital & Community Charity, where Cheryl works as a nurse.

I went to see them just this last weekend to catch up with them and check in, and I reiterated to them that I will continue, as their Member of Parliament, to do all I can to raise this issue on their behalf. I was glad to see that they are working united as a family to keep this issue going. Over the last three years, they have worked together to raise over £220,000 in total for local good causes.

Sudden unexplained death in childhood is the fourth leading category of death in children aged one to four in England and Wales. Approximately 40 children are affected by SUDC in the UK each year: one to two seemingly healthy children pass away every fortnight, often going to sleep and never waking up again. As seen in cases such as Jack’s, SUDC does not just affect young children under one year old; more one to nine-year-olds die of sudden unexplained death than as a result of road traffic accidents, drowning or fires.

Published epidemiology data suggests a common profile for children affected by SUDC. Most commonly, they are one to two years old and male. Most worryingly, they die unwitnessed and alone as they sleep. The children’s development is often normal, and their vaccinations are normally up to date.

The death of a child is always a tragedy. Sudden unexplained death in childhood is one of the most under-recognised medical tragedies, and simply not enough support is provided for many of the affected families. Cheryl and Darren received a year of support from the NHS following Jack’s death. They have both sought counselling, and the trauma still lives with them today.

I commend the work done by charities such as SUDC UK and Martin House children’s hospice in providing support for those impacted by sudden unexplained death in childhood. However, we cannot just rely on the good work of charities and volunteers. Despite their efforts, the delays in small charity-funded research into preventing these deaths remains completely unacceptable. One hundred and twenty seemingly healthy children have died without explanation since the last SUDC debate three years ago, which I took part in.

Although we are a long way from prevention, it is vital to develop a well-defined and co-ordinated national plan to gain better insight into the causes of SUDC and to raise awareness. There have been 13,000 publications on SIDS—unexplained deaths under 12 months—versus 100 publications on SUDC. There needs to be a co-ordinated and planned movement because, as I am sure the Minister is aware, a small amount of research will not move the dial. There also needs to be better and longer-term support, available free of charge, for families such as Cheryl, Darren and Louis, to help them to come to terms with the deep sense of loss, anguish and grief that comes with the death of a child.

09:52

[Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John.

The death of a child is something that no parent should ever have to endure. It is every parent’s worst nightmare. There are no words that can make sense of it, and no pain more unimaginable. For many families, understanding why their child died is an important part of beginning to process their grief. It does not take the pain away, but it can bring some sense of clarity. For families affected by sudden unexplained death in childhood, the answers never come, and that absence—that not knowing; that lack of clarity—brings its own trauma.

SUDC is the sudden and unexpected death of a child between the ages of one and 18, where no cause can be found, even after investigation. It is one of the leading categories of death for children aged one to four in England and Wales. Yet despite that, we still do not know why it happens. We cannot predict it, we cannot prevent it and we do not understand it.

I first came to this issue through a family in my constituency. At one of my surgeries, I met a grandmother whose 13-month-old grandson had died suddenly. The family asked me to share their story in the hope that no other family would have to go through what they have gone through. I pay tribute to the grandmother and her daughter for that courage. At their request, I will not use their names today.

It was an ordinary morning like any other day. Mum put her toddler down for his nap. He was well, and there were no signs of illness—no warning—but he never woke up. That is the reality of SUDC: there is no build-up or explanation, just a moment that changes everything. The impact on that family has been devastating. Alongside the shock and grief came something else: the cruelty of not knowing why. That uncertainty compounded their trauma, and the emotional toll became so overwhelming that it caused severe mental health challenges.

At the very point the family needed care, clarity and compassion, the system repeatedly let them down. They endured 13 months of pain awaiting a post-mortem. They received phone calls from medical professionals without warning, the day after their child died. Professionals used insensitive language, causing further harm. They were given inconsistent and incorrect information. At one stage, they were told the post-mortem had been completed while the child was still in the hospital’s care.

This is not just about delay; it is about dignity. Sadly, that family’s experience is far from unique. Families across the country report similar patterns: long periods of silence followed by a sudden, distressing and poorly timed communication. They find themselves chasing answers when they should be supported, and in some cases having to explain SUDC to professionals. At a time of profound trauma, families are left to carry the burden alone. As is so often the case, those with less financial resources face even greater barriers, whether in accessing counselling, navigating systems or challenging poor care.

Traumatic grief demands trauma-informed care, but too often it is missing. Organisations such as SUDC UK are stepping in to support families, raise awareness and push for answers, but the reality is that they are doing so in the absence of a clear, co-ordinated national approach. That gap should concern us all.

At its heart, this points to a wider issue. SUDC remains one of the most unrecognised medical tragedies we face. Awareness is low, research is limited, and without understanding there can be no prevention. We cannot accept that. Families deserve answers, consistency and to be treated with care at every step. That means a system that is joined up, where knowledge is shared, professionals are trained and support is not dependent on postcode or circumstance.

It also means addressing the workforce challenges we face. There is a severe shortage of paediatric pathologists in this country, and in some regions there are none at all. That is a key reason why families are waiting for months, and sometimes more than a year, for answers. After hearing about my constituent’s experience, I met with the Royal College of Pathologists, and I continue to support its work on recruitment, training and retention.

The truth is that families should not face further trauma because the system does not have the capacity to respond, so I ask the Minister to take four steps: to develop a national plan for SUDC, formulated by Ministers working with officials and scientific experts, as a matter of urgency; to commit to regular reporting at a minimum of every two years, so that we can track progress and hold ourselves accountable; to ensure that clear, accessible information for families is available through the NHS website and other portals, including the NHS knowledge and library hub for professionals; and to move quickly on implementing the recommendations of the paediatric and perinatal pathology workforce report, so that we can achieve quicker post-mortem times and safeguard genetic information and other data to support further research.

This is about every family, in Warrington South and across the country, who are living with unimaginable loss and deserve better from the system around them. We cannot change what has happened to them, but we can change what happens next. On behalf of my constituents, and on behalf of every family who has endured the unimaginable agony of losing a child suddenly and without explanation, I urge the Minister to act now.

09:58

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this very important debate.

First, I would like to recognise the work done by organisations such as SUDC UK that have campaigned on this issue to raise awareness of a very tragic problem. Their work is even more admirable given that so many of the people involved have themselves been affected by SUDC. The loss of a child is one of the worst things that can happen to a parent, but to lose a child and never know why they passed away must be agonising.

Sadly, SUDC is an issue that hits many families across the UK—around 40 children are lost to it every year. At the start of this year, I met two constituents whose son passed away from sudden unexpected death in childhood in 2024. I was struck by their bravery to share their story with me in the face of such tragedy. Hearing about the pain of losing their child and not knowing why, I was struck again by their strength and determination that something needed to be done. In my meeting with them, it was made clear that a serious lack of research and awareness around SUDC has left parents without support or answers.

The parents are calling for research to focus: on detailed post-mortem studies; assessing hidden biological vulnerabilities by focusing on genomic sequencing and family history; neurology and sleep-related mechanisms; and environmental and situational factors. Sadly, most active research appears to be taking place in the US, with very little happening here in the UK. I call on the Government to remove barriers to global research talent coming to the UK, and commit to a decade-long programme of public investment in research and development.

Shockingly, SUDC UK found that just half of the families affected by SUDC were assigned a bereavement key worker. Many parents had distressing experiences when dealing with authorities who offered little support. To increase support for families, Liberal Democrats are calling for the funding for bereavement support payments to be doubled, reversing cuts by the previous Government.

I would like to end by again thanking my constituents for giving me their time to share their story with me and highlighting the clear need for urgent change.

10:01

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this important debate.

I pay tribute to my constituents Nathan and Fiona Robinson, whose son Alfie tragically passed away. I first met them before I was elected, and I have since met them again and heard their story. I am standing here today to speak on their behalf, and on behalf of other families who have suffered the same. I want to endorse everything that has been said in today’s debate—I will not repeat a lot of it, due to the time limit. I have some specific asks over and above those from SUDC UK, which are incredibly important and which I endorse; but based on Nathan and Fiona’s experience, I want to make sure that their voices and asks are also heard.

First, I ask the Minister to consider working with the Department for Business and Trade on expanding bereavement pay. Fiona had to return to work only two weeks after her son passed away. I know that the Department is looking at bereavement pay very closely as part of its review, but if the Health Minister could also contribute it would add extra weight, emphasising how important that is.

Fiona had to return to work prior to Alfie’s funeral and then had to take just a single day of annual leave to attend it. I think we can all agree that, in such horrific circumstances, that is not an acceptable position. I hope that the Government will consider intervening on this as part of the review. It is so important, because families often have to wait six to eight weeks for a post-mortem. That they should have to return to work before they have had that outcome is something we can no longer accept.

Secondly, as we have heard today, police training can often be quite patchy. We all accept that the police have a job to do, but it is so important that there is a dedicated family liaison officer, so that in the initial moments, hours, days and weeks, families are properly supported by the police. It is important to have someone there who can deliver difficult news and factual information in a sensitive way for the people who are suffering—whether that is graphic coroner’s phone calls or anything else. I hope the Minister will consider working with the Home Office and the Policing Minister to deliver a more holistic approach to how families are treated in the early days and weeks of this unimaginable loss.

Thirdly, Nathan and Fiona relayed to me that they would like to see better training in schools, and even a dedicated teacher or teaching assistant in every school who is trained to support a child if they have a sibling who passes away in these circumstances. Again, that support can be quite patchy, based on whether the school has a teacher, teaching assistant or member of staff who has similar experience or training in dealing with this issue. It is such a small change, which would not cost a lot of money but would make such a big difference to families who suffer with child loss.

Inquest dates have already been covered by other Members, but Nathan and Fiona had to wait more than six months for an inquest, which is completely agonising. That gets added on to the other things I have raised, about the need for better police liaison and having to return to work after two weeks, which means having to continue with life while waiting that long for an inquest. I really think we can do better than that.

I pay tribute to Nathan and Fiona for sharing their story with me, and all the families in the Public Gallery today. It is incredibly brave and it takes a huge amount of strength to share stories like theirs. I hope that the Minister will see today as a new dawn and the start of change in this area, to help families today and in the future.

10:05

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this debate. I also recognise my predecessor as the Member of Parliament for Spelthorne, Kwasi Kwarteng, who sponsored this debate back in 2023.

All Members have expressed that they simply cannot imagine what it is like to be a parent sitting in the Public Gallery or watching our proceedings at home. I am struck by the fact that many of those parents would have been sitting there in 2023, hearing, “This is raising awareness,” and, “We have to get going on this.” They have seen the personnel round here change a bit, and have seen us swap sides, but they are still sitting there, and very little has been done since 2023. I hope the Minister can give us some reassurance about what action can actually happen, so that when we have another Westminster Hall debate in three years’ time, and the same people are sat in the Public Gallery, they are not just looking at a different group of people saying the same things and not doing anything.

I have come here to speak on behalf of two of my constituents, Louis Rogers and Harry Pitts. They cannot be here today because they are dead, and their death is unexplained. We can all forgive the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen for doing so, but he said that sudden unexplained death in children is the fourth largest “cause” of death, and of course it is not. He did not mean it, and we all know that. It is just a categorisation, and that is important. I am deeply suspicious whenever I see a pie chart that says, “There is this thing and that thing, and that thing is caused by that thing. Oh, and this huge chunk is ‘others’. We haven’t been able to do that big chunk; that is just ‘others’.” It makes me very suspicious, and suggests to me that someone somewhere is not trying hard enough to make that chunk much more explainable.

There are one or two other things that sudden unexplained death in children is not. It is not sudden infant death syndrome, and the crucial word there is “syndrome”. SIDS is a thing that has been identified; research has been done, preventive measures have been put in place, and deaths from SIDS have been drastically reduced—more power to their elbow. SIDS should show us a way forward about how we might approach this issue with more effort and research. Sudden unexplained death in children also has no respect for persons. It is not to do with socioeconomic circumstances; it is as likely or unlikely to happen to princes as to paupers. It is important that people slay that dragon in their minds.

I want to come to the notion of it being unexplained. It will not come as a massive surprise to hon. Members to hear that I was once in the Army; I have mentioned it on the odd occasion. If I asked someone a question in the Army, they were perfectly within their rights to say, “I don’t know, sir”—but it was a crime if they finished the answer at that point, because everyone in the Army would only say one thing when asked that question: “I don’t know sir, but I will find out.” What we have done hitherto is say to parents, “I don’t know,” and not gone to the crucial second bit of saying, “but I will go away and find out.”

As other hon. Members have mentioned, we need to raise awareness within the NHS—and it would be hugely beneficial if the NHS could do what it said it would do in 2003 and put it on the website—as well as raise awareness in society more broadly. It is awful to think that some parents who have suffered unimaginable and unexplained loss could also suffer stigmatisation within their communities—that they could suffer from suspicion because, obviously, babies don’t just die for no reason, do they?

Equally, it would be hugely beneficial to raise awareness among the police so that they can handle cases far more sensitively. I have heard stories of great practice, but also of not great practice. I also cannot imagine the concern over siblings that must affect so many families affected by sudden unexplained death in childhood. Will the Minister commit to coming up with a plan for sudden unexplained death in childhood? To begin with, we have to get a plan, because without a plan, we cannot change it. Once someone says, “We have got a plan,” we are beholden to report back at a periodicity—let us say, every two years—to see whether we are doing what we said we would.

I have mentioned it already, but the NHS website and raising awareness more broadly is equally important. We in this House and in this Chamber should not be satisfied with one Westminster Hall debate. We have raised awareness generally. We really owe it to our young children—to Louis and Harry and all the other children whose deaths are unexplained—to do the work to give an explanation and reduce the number of deaths in the future.

10:11

[Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this debate and speaking so powerfully, as he always does, about loss on these issues.

Frankie James Grogan lived in my constituency. He was three years old, and would have been 10 in January. Frankie was adored by his family, and everyone who met him said the same thing: that he was a joy to be around—always smiling, always laughing and always making his mum and dad proud. Frankie loved giraffes, as he loved most animals, and the only thing that could compete with them for his attention was his Lego.

Frankie was a special little boy, but in many other ways he was a normal little boy, like the millions of other toddlers who have just started nursery and have everything in life to look forward to. Then, one night, Frankie went to sleep and did not wake up: no explanation, no answers and, frankly, very little support—just an unimaginable loss. How does any parent come to terms with that? That is a question most of us cannot bring ourselves to even think about, but my constituent Sarah, who is with us today, had to face that reality. In a completely inspiring way, she turned her trauma into a movement for change, and working with SUDC UK she created Friends of Frankie, a brilliant local charity with a giraffe for its logo. The charity is dedicated to not just Frankie’s memory but his legacy, and that is the key point I want to raise today: Frankie’s legacy. When I have spoken to Sarah, she has articulated it better than I ever could: Frankie’s role now is to save other children and other parents too.

We need to make sudden unexplained death in childhood predictable, because when we can start to predict it, we can start to prevent it. First, as other Members have this morning, we need to recognise the scale of the issue and that these are not just isolated tragedies. We lose almost two children a fortnight to SUDC—in other words, more children than we lose to traffic accidents, fires and drowning. We work to keep children safe from those things—we have speed limits and fire alarms, and we teach children how to swim—but we do little to talk and think about or to research sudden unexplained death in childhood.

That is why we need action. As Members on both sides of the Chamber have discussed, we need a national plan with clear milestones for success that everyone can be held accountable for and that is based on research informed by quicker post-mortems, genetic data gathering and consistent, high-quality reviews. We can then start to understand, predict and prevent these deaths.

Take, for example, the link between febrile seizures and unexplained death. Frankie suffered 12 observed febrile seizures, yet the care he received for them was not informed by detailed research. One paramedic googled what a febrile seizure was in front of Sarah, shortly after Frankie had had one. I say to the Minister that we would not accept that lack of information—that ignorance—in any other part of children’s medicine, and we should not tolerate it when the consequences can be as tragic as these. Other Members have talked about how effective research has been when dealing with SIDS. If we had the same success here, we could save the lives of 32 children a year, which is surely as good a call to action as anyone can make.

It is great to see the Minister here so early in her new role, and I warmly welcome her to it. I urge her to meet SUDC UK as soon as possible and to pull the scientific experts together to agree a national plan that provides safety for every child and answers for every parent. That must be Frankie’s legacy—it is what Sarah and all friends of Frankie deserve.

10:17

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for raising this issue and pay tribute to him for his bravery in exposing his own devastating grief at the loss of his precious daughter to try to bring about the change in research and support that is so desperately needed.

This is an incredibly difficult subject; indeed, it is often whispered about, if it is spoken of at all. SUDC is a tragedy that strikes without warning, leaving families across our communities in a state of profound, unanswered grief. Over the years, I have met too many families whose joy has gone, and my heart aches for them as well.

In Northern Ireland, we pride ourselves on our close-knit communities, our resilience and our ability to respond to things in a family way. However, when a family faces SUDC, that resilience is tested by the unique pain caused by having no answers. Unlike sudden infant death syndrome, which affects babies under one year old, SUDC claims the lives of children aged from one to 18.

I will look at the reality at home and, as I always do, give a Northern Ireland perspective. According to recent data from the Lullaby Trust, although the number of children who die is small, the impact is immeasurable and is felt not only by the parents and siblings but by the extended family, in schools and churches, and throughout the community. When that stone hits the water, the ripples go far.

In 2023, 16 unexpected deaths of babies and young children were recorded in Northern Ireland. While thorough investigations may eventually find explanations for many of those, those that remain unexplained leave a permanent void. Northern Ireland has historically seen the highest infant mortality rate in the United Kingdom, and it is currently at 4.2 deaths per 1,000 live births. The trends are quite worrying. Although SUDC is distinct from infant mortality, those figures highlight the broader, urgent need to prioritise child health and research in Northern Ireland.

For children aged one to four, SUDC is one of the leading causes of death across the United Kingdom, often ranking higher than traffic accidents or fire, yet it remains one of the most under-recognised medical tragedies of our time. When we ask the Minister for help, that is what we are asking about.

[Carla Lockhart]

Will my hon. Friend join me in commending Dr Julie Rankin, a consultant in emergency medicine, who has been instrumental in working with the Williamson family from my constituency to create a bereavement suite in Craigavon Area hospital in memory of those little children who have died suddenly in unexplained circumstances? As we speak today, they are actually at a research event at Queen’s University Belfast, which demonstrates that Northern Ireland is advancing these things for families who are impacted.

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and I, and probably everyone else in the Chamber, would recognise the importance of parents having someone there to comfort them when such an awful tragedy takes place, and it is vital that my hon. Friend underlined that. One of my three asks of the Minister—which I will come to shortly—will be for research, and Queen’s University is to the fore on that.

For a child aged one to four, SUDC is one of the leading causes of death across the United Kingdom, yet it remains one of the most under-recognised medical tragedies. That is really the point I want to make: this is a medical tragedy and we are not doing enough, so we need to do more, as I think everybody has said.

The unexplained nature of these deaths is perhaps the cruellest part. Families go to wake their child for school or for a day of play, only to find the unthinkable. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency continues to track these tragedies, noting that they can affect any family, regardless of background.

But we are not here today simply to acknowledge or indeed to remember; we are here to advocate for change. When he set the scene, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen was very clear about what he wanted, which is probably what we all want. First, we need more research, and that is one of my three asks of the Minister. I am very pleased to see her in her place; it has been a pleasure to work alongside her on many subjects over the years we have been here, and I wish her well—I wished her well last time and I wish her well again—in the role she plays. We need more research in order to move beyond the unexplained and find the “why” of the problem. Secondly, we need better support for families navigating the complex joint agency response that follows a sudden death. Thirdly, we need something that today’s debate will help to raise: awareness.

Those are my three asks, so that no parent in Glasgow, Newtownards, Swansea or Somerset feels that they are the only one in the world that this has happened to. We owe it to the children we have lost and to the families they have left behind—[Interruption.]

[Lincoln Jopp]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Jim Shannon]

indicated assent.

[Lincoln Jopp]

As ever, the hon. Member is making an incredibly powerful speech. I know he feels these things incredibly strongly. I am sure we are all looking forward to his closing remarks.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Jim, why don’t you bring your remarks to a conclusion?

[Jim Shannon]

I will do that. Let us work together to make sure every child has the chance to grow up, and every family has the answers they deserve. While we do not mourn as those do who have no hope, I always treasure the fact that Jesus wept with Mary in her grief, even though he had a plan. God has a plan; sometimes we do not understand what it is, but we have to trust. So we weep together and we hold on to the hope we have. Today, we express our determination to do more for those grieving in our families, in our towns and in our great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

I call Michelle Welsh. Michelle, I want to start the winding-up speeches at around 10.30 am.

10:24

[Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this important debate.

There can be no greater devastation than the death of a child, but for many families the pain is made even more unbearable by one word: unexplained. When a child dies without answers, the grief does not settle. It lingers, it questions and it haunts. Parents are left asking themselves the same questions over and over: “What happened, and why don’t we know?”

I have spoken to a local family living with that reality—a family who are not just grieving, but searching for answers, understanding and peace. When this happens, families encounter a system that is broken and fragmented, investigations that take too long, communication that is unclear and support that falls away when it is needed the most. We must do better.

We need a national plan and improved data collection to identify patterns and risk factors. Every unexplained death in childhood must be treated with the seriousness it deserves—not just as a case to be closed but as a life that mattered, with a family who need answers. That means timely, thorough and transparent investigations; clear communication with families at every stage; ensuring that bereavement support is not an afterthought but a core part of care; and providing training for healthcare professionals, coroners and the police. This is not just about understanding why a child died; it is about helping families with such a tragic loss.

We owe it to those children and families to learn everything we can, to be honest about what we find and to ensure that no parent is left alone in their search for answers. We can, and must, ensure that no family is left in the dark. When a child dies, the silence that follows should never be from a system that was meant to provide the answers.

10:26

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for his brilliant opening speech setting out the frame of our conversation.

I am mindful of the families in the Public Gallery, who have had unimaginable loss and who represent just a fraction of the families across the United Kingdom who have gone through this tragedy. I also know that some hon. Members who have met families who have lost a child through sudden unexplained death in childhood could not be here today, and they have asked me to extend their thanks to SUDC UK for the advocacy and support it has provided for those families.

As hon. Members have said, losing a child is one of the most devastating experiences a parent can face. For parents to lose a child suddenly and to not know why is even harder to comprehend, leaving them without answers and wondering endlessly whether anything could have been done. That is a burden no parent should have to carry alone, yet that is the reality for families affected by sudden unexplained death in childhood.

As we have heard this morning, the experience for families is far from what we would hope. According to research by SUDC UK, only about half of families who experienced an unexplained child death were assigned a bereavement key worker. Many parents reported distressing and at times traumatic experiences when dealing with authorities in the aftermath of their child’s death. At the very moment families need compassion, clarity and support, too many are instead met with confusion, delays and even suspicion. We must do better than that.

Of course, that is a reflection not of the incredible staff across the NHS and other services but of a wider system that is failing. When a child dies unexpectedly, there is meant to be a structured review process. Families should be guided, supported and treated with care and dignity. Not only do more than half of NHS areas in England not have a specialist bereavement nurse available to visit parents after such a death, but as the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen set out, there is a shocking shortage of paediatric and perinatal pathologists across the United Kingdom. I am going to spend the next few minutes focusing on that often overlooked profession.

I recently met the president of the Royal College of Pathologists, Dr Bernie Croal. He explained that with vacancies for this specialism running at 37%, bereaved families are suffering. Let me set out the scale and consequences of the situation. In December last year, there were only 52 paediatric and perinatal pathologists, or PPP consultants, working in the United Kingdom. There were no PPP consultants working in Northern Ireland, none in the south-west and none in the midlands. The royal college says that that has led to

“total service collapse in these areas.”

In Northern Ireland, there has not been a paediatric and perinatal consultant in post since 2019. For children from Northern Ireland, post-mortem examinations are being carried out on an interim basis at Alder Hey children’s NHS foundation trust in Liverpool. Bluntly, if a baby or child needs a post-mortem, their body must be transported from Northern Ireland by ferry or plane to England.

Right across the UK, the lack of PPP consultants is having a harrowing effect on bereaved families, with one in five families having to wait six months or more, and some waiting more than 12 months. This matters because the support and expertise of paediatric and perinatal pathologists can give families answers where they exist, and in many cases, a diagnosis can help to screen other family members who might be affected by a certain condition. They can also potentially give information that aids treatment should a family decide to try for another baby.

I have three questions for the Minister. The first is on the root causes; namely, the shortage in the paediatric and perinatal pathology workforce. Given that the royal college recommends that training posts should be expanded to 37 places by 2030, what concrete, funded plans do the Government have to deliver those to ensure a sustainable pipeline of paediatric and perinatal pathologists?

Secondly, on the delays affecting families, will the Minister commit today to bringing forward a plan to improve the resilience of paediatric pathology services so that bereaved families receive timely answers when they are trying to understand the shocking and unexpected loss of their child?

Thirdly, on investment in the wider pathology workforce, what investment will be made in the multidisciplinary workforce, such as biomedical scientists and pathology technicians, to ensure that paediatric pathology services can function effectively? Even with more doctors, services fail without the supporting team.

A sudden unexplained death in childhood is truly shocking; it happens to around 40 children each year. Those deaths will never be explained, as things stand, and could not have been anticipated, but we have a moral obligation to make sure that what we can control—the right people with the right training in the right places—is there for families. Paediatric and perinatal pathology services is just one specialism where there are gaps in provision, and as we have heard from other hon. Members, there are other specialisms, too. More can be done, and so more must be done.

10:33

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir John. I declare an interest as an NHS consultant paediatrician and as a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) on securing today’s important debate.

The death of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. It is perhaps even more horrific when such a death happens suddenly, without warning and when no explanation can be found. I would like to convey my condolences to the family of Frankie Grogan, to Cheryl, Darren and Louis, to Nathan and Fiona, to the Rogers, Pitts and Williamson families, and to all other families grieving such a profound loss.

Childhood death is thankfully rare. However, more than 3,400 children aged nought to 17 die in England each year, and in around 40 cases the death cannot be explained. Parents are left with more questions than answers. Why has this happened? Why now? Since many cases are unwitnessed, did the child suffer? What was the cause? Could it have been prevented? Will it happen again to a sibling or a future child?

I want to focus on two questions today: how do we identify the cause of death in more cases? And how can we use that information to prevent future deaths? We can do that because we have done it before. In the 1980s, 2.35 children per 1,000 live births died within between a week and two years. That has been reduced by over 90%. The key factors were research, the Back to Sleep campaign, general safe sleeping advice and the avoidance of cigarette smoke. There is more to be done, but with the right plan, we have shown that lives can be saved.

I would first like to acknowledge some progress, including through the work of Baroness Kennedy, whose 2004 report and subsequent work with the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health led to the introduction in 2008 of a standard set of clinical samples, called Kennedy samples, that must be taken in the event of a sudden child or infant death. In most of the trusts I have worked in, there is now a box in each emergency department with all the samples and a list of what needs to be taken so that nothing is missed in any cases.

Child death overview panels, which were also established in 2008, are multidisciplinary panels to review the deaths of all children aged nought to 17. That process was further updated in 2018. When a child dies, all registrars must inform the child death overview panel, of which there are currently 58 in England. An expected death goes to a review meeting to look at the detail of the causes and whether it can be prevented in the future. In an unexpected death, there is an urgent joint agency response meeting including police and education, and a review meeting takes place later. All that information then feeds into the national child mortality database, set up in 2019, which is there to spot patterns and aims to prevent future deaths. It produces several reports each year with detailed guidance for Government on how deaths can be prevented.

It might be helpful to discuss an example. In December 2024, the NCMD published a report on child deaths due to asthma or anaphylaxis. I commend those who produced that report, including my medical colleague Dr Emilia Wawrzkowicz. They found that certain factors increased the risks of asthma or anaphylactic death in children, and that milk was most likely to trigger a fatal reaction. They found problems with auto-injectors that were forgotten, out of date or not with the child, or that the training had not been adequate, particularly in schools. They found issues with indoor air pollution, a failure to recognise life-threatening asthma and that children did not have asthma action plans.

Work has been done in many of those areas, which will have saved children’s lives since. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) has been promoting Benedict’s law, which hon. Members voted for just last week, to ensure that children at school are protected from anaphylaxis. Can the Minister update the House on progress in delivering the recommendations of the national child mortality database’s report? At the moment, the Government are not obliged to produce a response to the recommendations of the national child mortality database’s reports, unlike many other reports, and I think they should be. A more recent report was on the effect of consanguineous marriage on the rate of child deaths. It would be helpful to have Government responses to show that those reports are being read and acknowledged, and that the work that has been done is leading to change.

I worry about the effect of the imminent abolition of NHS England on the national child mortality database’s work. Child death overview panels do very good work in investigating each child death individually, but ICB funding cuts mean that not only bereavement staff, but investigatory staff, are being cut. The mergers of ICBs mean that local knowledge may be lost as the areas become very large. That is not in line with the statutory guidance in the Children Acts. Can the Minister update us on the Government’s plans in that area?

Whole genome sequencing offers an increased likelihood of finding children’s causes of death, but there is a long wait for results; it can take six months. Families are in great distress while they wait for those results, as we have heard. The Government suggest that they want to expand genome sequencing work, but it has already taken a very long time and the workforce plan has not yet been published. What are the Government doing to make sure we have the right staff and the right capacity to deliver that ambition?

Skin biopsies can be very helpful, particularly in diagnosing inborn errors of metabolism, which in children can cause illness and death, but they are not yet available everywhere. Can the Minister update the House on what is being done to roll out these tests so that, where possible, all causes can be found?

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), mentioned the fact that there are not enough pathologists. That is very important because it causes distress and delays, including to post-mortems, and it means that families have to wait much longer for results. Also, some children tragically die overseas, as happened to one of my patients relatively recently. In such cases, SUDC panels rely on being told about it and find it more difficult to investigate. Does the Minister have any comments on that?

Hon. Members talked about research. The Lullaby Trust has been doing gene sequencing on tissue samples from children who died of sudden unexplained death. In four of 20 cases, the tests were able to find evidence of infection, so there is hope that people who have been bereaved by a sudden unexplained death in the past can, with more modern techniques and retained tissue samples, discover the cause in the future. However, that will only happen if the research takes place. This research is charitably funded. We heard about the charity-funded research being done in Bristol, but the Government also need to fund research so that we get as much information as possible to prevent these deaths.

Lastly, I will talk about bereavement support. We have heard about the vital role that it plays in helping families, including siblings, in their time of grief, but I have heard about cuts to that as a result of mergers and funding changes to ICBs. In one case, a phone line has been taken away, meaning that families who want to approach bereavement support have to email and wait for a response—I can see hon. Members frowning. This is clearly not good enough, so I urge the Minister to look carefully at it and take the time to find out what is going on in each ICB regarding the commissioning of these services, so that we are not leaving families without the support they need during the most awful time they could ever experience.

What we have heard today is a call for action. We have heard a call to explain the unexplained, support families better, improve on research and, ultimately, to prevent the deaths of children.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

In calling my long-standing friend, Mrs Hodgson, I let hon. Members know that she has agreed to leave a couple of minutes at the end for Mr MacNae to wind-up. In turn, he is about to agree to leave a couple of moments at the end for me to move the motion.

10:42

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mrs Sharon Hodgson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing a debate on such an important issue. I am grateful to him for opening the debate during SUDC Awareness Month, a time dedicated to remembering children who have died suddenly and without explanation.

I also thank my hon. Friend for sharing Frankie’s story; it was profoundly moving to hear about it, as it was to hear all the contributions this morning. I want to acknowledge the courage of Frankie’s family in turning such devastating loss into a call for understanding and change. Frankie was clearly a much-loved little boy, as are all the children who are lost to SUDC, and no family should have to live with unanswered questions about why their child died. I am grateful to Frankie’s grandfather and SUDC UK for their determination in making sure that unexplained never means unexamined. I recognise the importance of the leadership, co-ordination and clarity that they are asking for.

It is important to me that we strengthen our understanding of SUDC and ensure that families can access the right support when they need it. This Government set out an ambitious commitment to raise the healthiest generation of children ever. To achieve that, we must ensure that families receive the best support and advice on all matters relating to child health, including SUDC.

I thank all hon. Members for their powerful and moving speeches and interventions today. I turn to some of the specific issues raised. I recognise the calls from a number of Members for a national plan. That is why we are strengthening pathology services, ensuring high-quality bereavement support and a growing research base. As that works progresses, we will continue listening to families, clinicians and researchers about where further improvements are needed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) asked me about bereavement leave, and made a very strong case. I will commit to raising that with Department for Business and Trade Ministers as a priority. I will also raise the issue of police and paramedic training, which my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) raised, with the relevant Departments and Ministers. Both my hon. Friends raised very important issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) asked about the implementation of the recommendations in the paediatric and perinatal pathology workforce report. I will write to her on that, and on the four points she called for in particular.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen for highlighting that information on SUDC was taken down from the NHS website. Parents who have lost a child to SUDC should be able to access the advice and support that they need. I have already asked my officials to investigate that and explore opportunities to include signposting on the NHS website.

No family should ever have to experience the loss of a child, as so many of us in this Chamber today have. It is vital all of us have access to compassionate and timely support when the worst happens. The child death review process ensures that every child’s death is understood sensitively and thoroughly, and is vital in helping families to understand what happened to their child. While bereavement support is commissioned locally to reflect the needs of each community, there is clear national best practice that sets out that every bereaved family should have a key worker to guide them through a time of inconceivable loss and heartbreak. That key worker helps to provide clarity, information and kindness, and helps families to access further sources of support where needed. We also encourage anyone seeking help to contact their GP, who can also guide them to appropriate services.

I also want to thank some of the wonderful organisations and charities across the country, such as SUDC UK, the Lullaby Trust, Cruse Bereavement Support and the Good Grief Trust, which provide exceptional support to families experiencing this devastating loss. Alongside that, the National Bereavement Alliance has published updated voluntary service standards to support continuous improvement in the quality of care. Putting the needs of children and their families first is at the heart of everything I will do in my role as a Minister. We will continue working with partners to ensure that bereaved families receive the compassion and support they deserve.

As we have heard today in detail, pathology waiting times can add to the distress experienced by families at a critical time when they need answers quickly. As was highlighted by the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, there is a nationwide shortage of paediatric pathologists in England and Wales, which can affect the time taken to complete pathology testing following a coronial post-mortem. To address that, NHS England has launched a national programme to strengthen perinatal and paediatric pathology services. The Government have made more than £2 million-worth of additional funding available to increase post-mortem capacity. That has increased training posts and the number of trainee doctors and new pathologists.

Alongside that, genomic testing for SUDC is available through the NHS genomic medicine service. Decisions about whether genomic testing is appropriate are made after the post-mortem and through careful discussions with specialist multidisciplinary teams. NHS England closely monitors how genomic testing is delivered across the country, so that it can spot where services differ and work with local teams to improve services. That helps to ensure families can benefit from high-quality, consistent services where they live. Taken together, these steps will help to ensure that families receive timely, high-quality investigations at moments of profound difficulty, while supporting the workforce who deliver this critical service.

As hon. Members have said, SUDC remains an under-researched area, and I agree that we must do more to deepen our understanding. The Government remain open to funding high-quality research into SUDC through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and we welcome applications on any aspect of child health, including SUDC.

For example, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen for raising the great work of Bristol University in hosting the national child mortality database and child mortality analysis unit. The Government’s support for the national child mortality database has already made a meaningful difference by bringing together national-level data on all child deaths in England and allowing a far greater understanding of deaths in children over the age of one.

I am encouraged to see that, building on that foundation, the University of Bristol has secured funding from SUDC UK for the Pioneer SUDC study. This will help to shape future research questions and contribute to deeper learning in this under-explored area. As this growing body of evidence develops, it will allow experts to identify where research can have the greatest impact and where gaps remain, including in areas such as febrile seizures. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that area today, because it is definitely one we need to look at.

[Jim Shannon]

On research, I will make a plea for Queen’s University Belfast, as I always do in such debates, because it does incredible work. It is not the only university that does so; many universities across this United Kingdom do so as well. Will the Minister engage with Queen’s University Belfast and other universities to ensure that the necessary research can be achieved and thereby save lives?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes. I thank the hon. Member for his very moving speech; he often moves me to tears in moments such as this. I will take that away, and ask my officials to look at the work of Queen’s University Belfast, because he makes a very important point.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), made a couple of points. I will write to her on the Government’s responses to recommendations, because it is a valid point and one that we should be aware of in future. On the point about ICBs making services more effective by cutting duplication and making sure we have the right people in the right places to deliver quality services, that is something I will also be paying particular attention to, as the Minister with responsibility for children’s health.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My point was less that mergers of ICBs would make services more efficient, but more that that is leading to services being cut, which may make them less good, and that the principle that CDOPs look at the local area is diluted if the local area becomes very large.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I take on board what the hon. Lady says. When I write to her on the point about responses to recommendations, I will elaborate further on that point, having made sure that I have understood it correctly.

[Lincoln Jopp]

The Minister is very generous with her time, and I am grateful to her for that. She welcomed the research funded by the SUDC UK in Bristol, but I do not think we have heard any commitment to Government-funded research into this area. Will she clarify whether she will take that forward?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I think I may have mentioned some Government-funded research, but I will commit to write to the hon. Gentleman on that point, rather than try to guess what I may have said.

In closing, I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen for bringing forward this debate, and all hon. Members for their heartbreaking speeches. Those of us here today who have had the privilege of taking part in this debate will never forget them and the names of the children either: Frankie, Miranda, Jack, Louis and Harry—as well as all the other precious children who we have lost to SUDC. The names, families and circumstances mentioned today are all in Hansard now forever. I want to thank all the families in the Public Gallery for being with us today and for their campaigning for change, research and better support.

A number of Members here today recognise that drive because it is what drove us here ourselves. I take on board the plea from the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) to ensure that we see progress and do not all find ourselves back here in a few years’ time having the same debate. We will continue to work with clinicians, researchers, charities and—above all else—families to deepen our understanding, strengthen the support available, and ensure that every child’s death is fully examined and that their life is never forgotten.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Minister. Before I call on Andy to wind up, I echo the thanks to all Members for contributing to this important debate. I also particularly thank all those who have taken time to attend in the Public Gallery. Thank you so much.

10:56

[Andy MacNae]

I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), for bringing her depth of professional experience. I also thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to the points raised.

I want to reflect on a couple of the issues that were raised. First, I thank the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) for taking me to task on describing SUDC as a cause of death. He is absolutely right: it is not; it is simply a category of the unknown. That is worth reflecting on, because it puts into context the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) that we focus on understanding, predicting and preventing. When we combine that great unknown with that appeal to simply understand, we recognise the challenge, but also the imperative to make progress in this area. It is clear that there is an absolute consensus across both sides of the House in calling for a plan and the prioritisation of this issue. It was good to hear the Minister recognising the importance of that.

Bereavement support came up several times. We have so much terminology: bereavement support, bereavement care and longer-term mental health support. The moment at which a family needs support to deal with the trauma of loss can vary greatly. It can be a day, week or year after the loss and having the right support at the right time remains absolutely vital. I very much hope and believe that it is something that the parent services and maternity safety investigation and the ongoing taskforce will grasp as a priority in their work.

To reflect on some of the commitments made by the Minister, I think she has recognised that some things can be done quickly and effectively—simply getting good information about SUDC up on the website seems to be an obvious imperative that we can be acting on. However, Members have raised a range of opportunities, in particular the opportunity to build on the charity-funded research done so far and move it into Government-funded research. I would be grateful if the Minister agreed to meet with me and SUDC UK to discuss how we can take this debate forward, because as hon. Members have said, it cannot stop here. This must be the start of an ongoing process where we build understanding, take action and get real change to create a genuine legacy—a legacy for Frankie and all the families affected.

Again, I finish by thanking everyone in the Public Gallery for being here. It really matters, and I am so grateful for your presence.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood.

Water Supply and Housing Targets: West Kent

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Tom Tugendhat will move the motion and the Minister will respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge and the Minister. I have had notice that one Member will intervene, which is fine. Unfortunately there will not be an opportunity, Tom, to wind up. That is the custom in these short debates.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered water supply and housing targets in west Kent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John—not for the first time or, I certainly hope, the last. What is less pleasurable is having no water coming out of your taps. Sadly, that could be the reality for more than 13,000 new homes in Tonbridge and Malling if the Government get their way. Planning decisions in the community are, I think we would all agree, best left to local councillors. After all, it is right that those elected at the most local level have responsibility for shaping the place they live in and represent. However, this Government’s planning policies are taking us away from that principle.

Since the general election, we have seen mandatory housing targets reintroduced and increased enormously. They are up by 34% in Tonbridge and Malling and by 63% in Sevenoaks district. Then, of course, there is the grey-belt policy. I have been getting used to Green party and Labour MPs going through the voting Lobbies and making things easier for development to merge towns and villages and create one single, homogeneous, blended whole and for development on previously protected grey-belt land. However, water seems not to have been considered. There are many aspects of water locally that I could focus on, including the excellent work done in Edenbridge on water quality by NEDRA—the New Edenbridge District Residents’ Association—but in the interests of time, I will focus my comments today on water supply only.

This is now a very salient issue for those of us in west Kent. Although Tunbridge Wells has been the worst affected, towns and villages such as Tonbridge, Edenbridge and across the north downs have lost water supply this winter and last winter. Why is that? It is because there is not enough water in the system to supply houses in our area. I am aware that the Water Industry Act 1991 in effect places a legal requirement on water suppliers to ensure that running water appears when the tap is turned on. Although South East Water is not very good at doing that right now, we also need to focus on the future. That means asking fundamental questions. Where is the water—now and in the future? Do housing targets accurately reflect the water infrastructure in west Kent?

I will focus on two authorities in the area that I represent: Tonbridge and Malling borough council and Sevenoaks district council. I emphasise to the Minister that they are two of the very best run councils in the whole country and have been for a number of years. We are very lucky to have brilliant people at both councils, and both are trying to do the right thing for future development and adopt a local plan. In both cases, however, that has been delayed from 2024 because of the Government changing planning policy. It is not the fault of either council that they do not have an adopted local plan; that is because of tinkering and meddling by the Government and, historically, the Planning Inspectorate.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this issue; he is absolutely right. He outlines a case in his own constituency, which is very pertinent to him. Unfortunately, what he describes is the case across the whole of the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, I have the very same problem. Northern Ireland Water seems to be discouraging planned housing, as it cannot meet the need. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government must step in with direct action and fund the deficit while enforcing the obligations on water companies to hold up their end of the deal?

[Tom Tugendhat]

It is no surprise to me that this issue applies across the whole of the United Kingdom. I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

One thing that the Government have not changed, but ought to change, is the position of water companies in planning. Somewhat strangely, water companies are statutory consultees on the local plan process, but not on planning applications. I invite the Minister in her response to explain whether she agrees that this is peculiar.

There are four water supply companies across Sevenoaks district. Two cover the area that I am privileged to represent: SES Water in and around Edenbridge, and South East Water elsewhere. In advance of this debate, I asked the new leader of Sevenoaks district council, Kevin Maskell, to outline what engagement on local plan and infrastructure delivery matters the council has received from water companies. The answer was that only two of the four water companies had even replied, and the replies received were very limited. Indeed, the experience from Sevenoaks is that water companies see their role as not being a priority.

There is no detailed modelling for housing projections against water resources management plans, especially for site allocations. All infrastructure planning is deferred to the planning application stage, where the water companies are not even a statutory consultee. That makes it impossible to plan for the cumulative impact of developments on the water network. How is that good for planning? Well, it isn’t.

If the situation with water suppliers is a problem in Sevenoaks district, however, it is critically urgent and potentially disastrous in Tonbridge and Malling. For the benefit of the Minister, I will explain what has happened in recent months. Tonbridge and Malling borough council agreed to its regulation 18 local plan consultation in the autumn. It received unanimous cross-party support, which was a huge vote of confidence in the leadership of Matt Boughton and the work of Mike Taylor, the cabinet member for planning. Both of them have contributed enormously to the life of our community.

The TMBC cabinet member for infrastructure, Adem Mehmet, approached infrastructure providers for consultation responses, including South East Water, which is the drinking water supplier for almost all of the borough—and the whole of the part that I am lucky enough to represent. I have a copy of the response here, dated 17 December 2025. In it, South East Water tells Tonbridge and Malling borough council that the maximum number of additional homes it can supply between now and 2042 is 6,318. The Government housing target for the council is 19,620.

What is Tonbridge and Malling borough council expected to do? Is it supposed to allocate sites for 13,302 new homes, despite having been told that there is no infrastructure for water to be supplied to those properties? I am sure that the Minister agrees that this would not be appropriate or wise. Having received the response, and being the excellent councillor he is, Adem Mehmet wrote to South East Water on 15 January this year, which happened to be in the middle of the water outages we were facing. South East Water responded on 3 February.

Three simple questions were put to South East Water. First, does South East Water agree that it cannot provide sufficient water to cope with a significant increase in housing targets? South East Water agrees that it cannot. Secondly, do the current targets mean that there will be more water shortages? Again, South East Water agrees that the probability of water outages is higher. Thirdly, would the planned increases identified in the water resources management plan allow South East Water to cope with the Government housing targets for Tonbridge and Malling? South East Water says that the increases will not be sufficient to meet the Government housing targets.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend on securing this debate and on the speech he is making about the challenge of supplying water to Tonbridge and Malling, now and in the future with such a huge number of developments planned. Given the difficulty of supplying water to his constituency, where there are 19,000 more homes planned, how on earth can there be enough water for the 20,000 homes in the pipeline for my constituency? We are already suffering with water outages and having to rely on water being tankered, so there is very poor resilience. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should think again about the scale of the housing plan for rural constituencies like mine and his, particularly given the lack of adequate infrastructure?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her comments, which I completely agree with. I am sure that they have generated enormous response to her current petition, which is at signhelenspetition.com, should you wish to sign it, Sir John. I understand that it will be increasingly popular at this time, and rightly so, given how badly areas of east Maidstone were affected during the water outages a few weeks ago.

What I and my hon. Friend have said will be no doubt familiar to the Minister, who has been aware of this for a number of weeks. She received a letter from Tonbridge and Malling borough council leader Matt Boughton on 16 January, and another on 11 February—I have both of them here. There was one reply received on 12 February from Baroness Taylor in the Minister’s Department, which frankly does not answer the question and does not mention South East Water’s comments at all. The council has chased for a proper reply, but is still waiting. I am sure that the Minister will update me on where that is.

I have been told that officials in the Minister’s Department have met with the planning department from the council, but again there has been no progress. It is that lack of urgency that motivated me to apply for this debate, because, frankly, this cannot go on. I have all the evidence of the council being proactive in raising this issue, and it clearly wants the same as the Department: a local plan. However, the Department is not giving this the attention it needs. I request that the Minister and her officials meet me and senior representatives from the council to resolve this issue urgently.

Why so soon? It is quite obvious that there is not enough water to cope with the current housing targets. The Minister has told the council to submit a local plan for the new high housing targets this year. The applications are coming in—ask residents in Hadlow and Wateringbury, or Edenbridge in Sevenoaks district—but I have been told that Tonbridge and Malling now cannot determine planning applications for new development because of these water issues, even on sites it wants to develop. Right now, there is effectively a moratorium on development in Tonbridge and Malling because of the Minister’s Department. How does that help the Government meet their ambition for 1.5 million homes a year? The Government clearly need to sort this out for our community now, and make changes to prevent this from happening elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Why did the Government not take account of the water resources management plans when determining housing targets for our councils in 2024? Why are water resources management plans not developed using up-to-date housing targets? It is pretty absurd that the 2007 housing target is used to inform the 2024 plan for water infrastructure in our community. It is no wonder that there is deep opposition to housing targets and deeper distrust of water companies.

Why can Sevenoaks not get any meaningful engagement with water providers on the local plan? Why has Tonbridge and Malling been placed in this position by a completely unrealistic Government policy? The Government are telling them that they must meet their housing targets, and they have no choice, yet the housing target has 13,000 more homes than the water supplier has the ability to cater for. It is not even close to being realistic either way.

What is the solution? There are only two possibilities: one is to get more water into the system, and the other is to reduce the housing target. The water resources management plan 2024 identifies a lot of schemes: new pumping stations, upgrading waste water treatment works, a new pipeline in Tonbridge and new drinking water storage tanks. We could do all the above and we would still be 13,000 homes away.

The question remains: where is the water coming from to fill the extra capacity in the water network? A new reservoir would help, but where would that be in our community, given our proximity to Bewl Water and Bough Beech? The truth is that there simply cannot be enough water for the scale of development that the Government are insisting be accommodated in our area. That means that there is only one way out of the issue: the Government must urgently and immediately reduce the housing target for Tonbridge and Malling borough council, and do the same for other councils in South East Water’s area, including Sevenoaks district council.

It would be completely irresponsible for the Government to proceed with the current housing targets for both councils while this issue remains unresolved. The Minister knows that I agree that we need more homes; in my community, we particularly need homes for people to live as families with their relatives. Our community should not only take its fair share but be part of that opportunity. However, new homes must be built only if we can actually supply them with water, and at the moment we cannot. I urge the Minister to consider the points I have raised and, on the Tonbridge and Malling issue, agree to meet Matt Boughton and me as a matter of urgency.

11:15

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Miatta Fahnbulleh)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) for securing this debate and other hon. Members for their contributions. I appreciate the concerns raised around the challenges of meeting the housing target and the appalling situation with the water company and water shortages.

I share the frustration of the right hon. Member for Tonbridge at the lack of adequate provision—water is a basic thing that we should be able to provide to all homes in every part of the country. We know that the status quo is not good enough, and I will set out the steps that we are taking in response. Let me be clear at the outset that the water supply disruption that South East Water customers have faced is wholly unacceptable. My colleagues, both in my Department and in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, have been robust on that, and Ofwat will do its job by holding South East Water to account.

DEFRA has also set up the water delivery taskforce to do the job of holding companies to account on the questions of existing capacity to deliver water to homes and future capacity to deliver for the future homes that we need. To date, the taskforce has led work across the Government, regulators and the water sector to resolve blockers where water scarcity issues have stalled development, for example in Oxford, Cambridgeshire and north Sussex. That work has unblocked 10,000 new homes. David Hinton, the chief executive of South East Water, will be appearing before the April taskforce, which will scrutinise the company’s performance, ask the very questions that the right hon. Member for Tonbridge has asked today and demand improvements in delivery.

We are alive to the issues that have been raised in this debate. Alongside action taken through the taskforce, officials across DEFRA and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are working in partnership with Tonbridge and Malling borough council to explore short-term interventions to progress both current planning applications and local plan development. They will draw on our experience in north Sussex and Cambridge, where we have achieved progress, and explore options to commission an independent review of groundwater headroom, new home building standards and retrofitting existing buildings.

[Helen Whately]

The Minister mentioned that the water taskforce will be meeting with David Hinton, the chief executive of South East Water, to hold him to account for its abysmal performance in the recent outages. If that taskforce finds that South East Water’s response has been inadequate, as I believe it was, what action will the taskforce be able to take? I believe that David Hinton should no longer be the chief executive because of those failures.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

In the short term, the priority is to make sure that the company has a viable plan so that we can deliver the homes that we want. The approach that the taskforce has taken in other areas is to sit alongside the company to stress-test its proposals and propose improvements to them so that we can get the building happening. As the hon. Member will know, we are driving through bigger reforms of the water sector because we recognise that the status quo is suboptimal and that we need to hold companies and their bosses to account where they are not delivering for their customers.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

The Minister refers to the changes made in Sussex; I assume she means the changes made around Horsham, which relate to Southern Water, rather than South East Water. Nothing that has changed there has increased water supply; it has merely unlocked the restrictions on house building. My concern is that the timescales for the water delivery workforce are very long, but those for delivering district plans and the Government’s housing targets are very short. Surely the challenge is that they are totally at odds with each other.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. It is a challenge, but our job is to work across Government and the different agencies, and with the water companies, to rise to the challenge. I gently point out that over the past decade and a half, the Conservative party could have introduced reforms to bring our water sector up to scratch and deliver what our communities need for the housing they also need. That was not done, so we are working on it at record speed. Our commitment is to work holistically across the piece to resolve the challenge, but we absolutely recognise that it is a challenge.

Hon. Members have questioned the validity of our housing targets. It is absolutely right that the Government are taking bold action to overhaul the planning system and carry out the reforms necessary to deliver the homes and infrastructure that every single community needs. There is consensus across the House that the status quo in terms of housing development is not adequate for the needs in our communities, so we have to step up.

We believe that our revised standard method strikes the right balance between meeting the scale of need across the country and focusing additional growth on the places facing the biggest affordability pressures. While those targets are ambitious, we have always been clear that they are necessary, given our inheritance. The key is to ensure we work consistently across the different parts of the system to deliver that objective and ambition.

[Helen Whately]

Will the Minister give way?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I will make more progress.

The lack of water infrastructure is blocking our capacity to deliver more homes and is resulting in water outages such as those in west Kent. That is a clear signal that we need wholesale reform and that the system is not doing what needs to be done.

We believe that we can secure water supplies for the future only by managing water demand, reducing leakages and creating new water assets. We have to do all three of those things, and we are working with the water industry and the regulator to do that.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I understand that the Minister is talking about very short-term interventions, but this is about 13,000 homes over a period running up to 2042. I was not going to be partisan about it, but this has come about because of the removal of planning requirements from cities such as London and their imposition on areas such as west Kent. That is a Government decision, and they have a mandate to execute it. They and the Green party voted through the change of green belt into this imaginary grey belt—again, they have the mandate to do that—but let us not pretend that it is not a political choice. The political choice that her Government have made has resulted in increased pressure on water companies, which did not exist before. We can play political games if she wishes, but the reality is that this is a very clear political reallocation from the need in London to the need in rural areas.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

Let me address that point directly. We are clear that we are not building enough homes across every part of the country, and we are trying to ensure that the system delivers. Whether it is my community in London or the right hon. Gentleman’s community in Tonbridge, the reality is that there are not enough affordable homes for people to live in—a situation none of us wants. It is absolutely right to have housing targets commensurate with the need. I do not believe that politics is being played here; we are trying to deal with the need in parts of the country where there is both demand and the capacity to deliver more homes.

I acknowledge that there is a problem with the wider system and the infrastructure that we are building, and we are addressing it, but that is made harder by the fact that, candidly, a lot of these problems have been here for a decade and a half. They could have been addressed, but they were not, so we are trying to do that. We are having to do it all at the same time, but nobody can ask us to resile from our ambition to build enough homes for people to live in.

[Helen Whately]

I thank the Minister very much for taking a second intervention from me. I do not disagree that the country needs more homes; that is an accepted fact. However, what we have seen under her Government is housing targets being shifted out of London, so that London’s numbers have fallen and the numbers in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) and in my constituency of Faversham and Mid Kent have gone up. Against that backdrop, I have not seen London homes having large outages where they have not had enough water for days on end, whereas in Kent we have had them on multiple occasions. Yet still her Government persist in reducing the housing ambitions for London and putting more housing in rural areas, such as our constituencies, where we simply do not have the infrastructure that is needed. Surely she must recognise that the Government need to change tack.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

On that specific point, our methodology is trying to strike a balance, where we think there is both need for homes and the capacity to build those homes. I absolutely acknowledge that the water sector and some of our other infrastructure providers are not where they need to be. All the reforms we are trying to drive through in planning reform and the water sector, and the robust action that we are taking to work across the piece, are in response to that very problem.

For example, in the context of the investment required to build our water assets, the Government are ensuring that £104 billion of private sector investment is going into the water sector over five years to enable that building of assets. I want to reassure the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and hon. Members that the Government will introduce the water reform Bill when parliamentary time allows, working in partnership with water companies, investors and communities to make sure that we have a system that is fit for purpose.

An important part of that reform, which pertains to this very debate, is the establishment of regional water planning function, which will enable a more holistic, co-ordinated approach to water, environment and supply planning and support the delivery of national strategic objectives such as economic growth, meeting house building targets and nature recovery, while enabling regional and local priorities to be realised. That more joined-up approach will deliver a more resilient and future-proof water system—that is our hope and our intention—better able to absorb shocks, which will hopefully prevent situations such as those we have seen in west Kent from ever happening again. I think there is consensus that such situations are appalling and that we absolutely must mitigate them in the future.

To answer the direct questions put by the right hon. Member for Tonbridge about the water companies and their role in the planning system, we are just going through the responses to a consultation on statutory consultees. The Government intend to list water companies and sewage companies as consultation bodies for new plan-making, so that they are involved right up front in the system. However, we are also looking at their relationship with regard to planning applications in particular, for the reasons that he set out.

Critically, the right hon. Gentleman also asked me to sit down and discuss this issue with my team and other Ministers. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) is the Minister for Housing and Planning, but I will take that suggestion away and get that meeting in the diary as a priority, because we appreciate and understand the specific issues. I come back to the fact that we know there is a systemic problem; we are working hard to deal with it, but we recognise the urgency of the situation, because the plan-making process is happening.

To conclude, I again commend the right hon. Member for Tonbridge for securing this important debate and shining a spotlight on the particular issues and concerns in his constituency. I return to the fact that the status quo is appalling; the water shortages that we have are absolutely unacceptable, and the Government are committed to working with him and with his local council to make sure that we are resolving this situation.

We all agree that we need more homes. We also all agree that the water sector has to be reformed, so that we can deliver the infrastructure we need to service those homes. This Government are committed, as we have been from day one, to driving through whole-system reform to ensure that the interaction between planning, house building and the wider infrastructure sector is right and fit for purpose, in order to deliver what we need. I look forward to continuing our engagement and to making sure that we resolve the specific issue with the plan and the capacity within the plan. My Department is ready and willing to work very closely with the council to do that, and we will take the plan forward.

I again thank the right hon. Member for securing this debate and you, Sir John, for chairing it.

Question put and agreed to.

11:29

Sitting suspended.

Endometriosis Services

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd in the Chair]

14:30

[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered access to endometriosis services.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to her place. Many people will recognise that she is a long-time champion of women and women’s health, so it is especially fitting that she is responding today. I am particularly grateful to have secured a debate during Endometriosis Awareness Month to discuss, as a matter of deep importance to women in Ipswich and across the country, access to local specialist endometriosis services.

Endometriosis affects one in 10 women. That means that more than 1.5 million women in the UK are living with a condition that causes chronic pain and infertility, and has profound effects on mental health. Yet for women in Ipswich, specialist care is out of reach. There is no specialist endometriosis clinic at Ipswich hospital, so women who are already living with debilitating pain and who have often waited years for a diagnosis, never mind treatment, are forced to travel to access the care that they desperately need. That is clearly wrong on so many levels.

I want to share the story of one of my constituents, Monica Thomas, who is here with us in the Public Gallery—that sounds very formal, but Monica was in the year below me at Earl Soham primary school 25 years ago. She has battled symptoms for nearly that long; it was 17 years before she finally got a diagnosis. She is now waiting for lung surgery due to having thoracic—as well as pelvic—endometriosis. Despite years of chest pain and breathing difficulties, she was refused referrals to a thoracic specialist and ended up seeking a private opinion. She lives in daily pelvic and chest pain, constantly deals with breathlessness and spends many days bedbound—thankfully not today, Monica.

Monica took her suffering and turned it into determination, resilience and strength. She founded Women’s Health Hope, an award-winning charity dedicated to supporting, advocating for and educating people about women’s health. It shines a light on the unique challenges that women face and creates a safe space in which no one feels alone on their journey. Monica really is a powerhouse and we should all be inspired by her, but also by all the women who have come down from Ipswich today, including Faye Ramsey and so many others. They are battling not just for themselves, but for so many of their friends and family members and many women yet to come—thank you for making the journey here today.

An almost unifying experience for women with endometriosis is having their symptoms overlooked, ignored and dismissed. They are told that they are overreacting and that pain is normal for women. A recent survey by Endometriosis UK found that 82% of respondents had been told by a healthcare practitioner that they were making a fuss about nothing, or had heard similar comments. It takes on average 10 visits to a GP before someone mentions endometriosis. In England, the average waiting time from first visiting a GP with symptoms to getting an endometriosis diagnosis is nine years and four months. Let that sink in: it takes nearly a decade just to get a diagnosis, never mind treatment.

Women are waiting to be diagnosed with a relatively common reproductive health condition and are suffering preventable adverse effects. A key reason for that is the normalisation of symptoms of reproductive ill health and particularly of severe period pain, the severity of which is often not believed. From a young age, women are taught to expect painful, heavy periods and that experiencing severe pain is nothing noteworthy and just par for the course—part of being a woman. We live in a society in which women are told to suck it up and endure pain that interferes with every aspect of their daily lives.

Women learn from a young age to hide their pain away because they must be overreacting and to feign headaches and stomach pains, migraines and food poisoning. More than 1 million women mask period pain sick days every year, because they feel unable to tell their boss the true reason. The systemic normalisation of symptoms means that women do not solicit medical help when they need it. Indeed, studies have shown that less than half of women with severe reproductive health conditions seek help.

The lack of specialist endometriosis services at Ipswich hospital is symbolic of how women’s pain has historically been deprioritised. Unsurprisingly, gynaecology has the largest waiting list of any specialty for working-age adults. As of January 2026, more than half a million women were waiting for gynaecological care. When specialist services are left to a postcode lottery, care for women in places such as Ipswich becomes even further out of reach. It deepens health inequalities, delays treatment and adds unnecessary barriers to accessing essential services.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. An estimated 75,000 women in Northern Ireland are living with endometriosis, with an average wait of seven to eight years for diagnosis. Does the hon. Member agree that it is vital that national clinical guidelines are properly implemented and that every hospital trust should have a designated endometriosis lead clinician?

[Jack Abbott]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and completely agree with him. I have focused much of my speech on the lack of specialist care in Ipswich, but the postcode lottery is affecting people and communities across the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland.

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend on his incredibly powerful argument. I also commend Monica and other women here today. Women in my constituency have told me that the pain they experienced was described as “normal and expected” by health professionals. I welcome the Department of Health and Social Care’s commitment to renew the women’s health strategy to tackle inequalities in care. Does my hon. Friend agree that any such strategy should include a commitment to provide the right resources, training and funding? Although there is no cure, women deserve the best possible care.

[Jack Abbott]

I thank my hon. Friend and could not agree more.

For women with endometriosis who may have already waited years for a GP even to mention the word, and who have already been utterly failed by institutionalised and deeply structural medical misogyny, this is a complete dereliction of duty. The human cost of inaction is devastating. Untreated endometriosis can have an untold impact on someone’s life, including on their education, career, relationships, fertility and mental health: 98% of respondents to Endometriosis UK’s most recent survey said the condition affected their mental health and 63% that there was a significant impact.

Women’s lives are put on hold and even changed for ever. They are our neighbours, colleagues, friends, families, partners, girlfriends, wives, mothers and daughters. We all know women who are suffering and struggling to access care right now. In Ipswich, those lives are further disrupted by unnecessary travel for specialist services that should be available locally.

When we came into government, we pledged never again to neglect women’s health. Honouring that commitment is a moral necessity. We have made significant strides since coming into office, with waiting lists for gynaecology care falling for the first time in years. The updated women’s health strategy has the capacity to make an enormous difference. The Government are investing in research on diagnosis, treatment and pain management, with a new research programme on pain management for endometriosis starting this month.

Endometriosis will be prioritised under the new virtual hospital NHS Online, meaning women will be able to access specialist expertise online much more quickly. If that commitment is to mean anything to women in Ipswich and across the country, however, it must also include equitable access to specialist endometriosis services. National strategies, research investment and virtual hospitals are all welcome and necessary, but digital access cannot replace talking to a specialist face to face. Women in Ipswich need that local provision of specialists.

We have somehow allowed a culture to develop where women living in pain is seen as acceptable—as something normal to be expected. That should never have been allowed to happen, but we finally have a Government who are taking women’s health seriously and a Minister who has championed this for many years. That should give us all hope, because we owe it to my constituents here today and to all women who have spent years in excruciating, debilitating pain, who have been ignored and belittled, and who have suffered alone. We cannot let the next generation of women with endometriosis be failed in the same way. They all deserve better, but without specialist care in our communities where people live, that would be impossible.

14:39

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for securing this vital debate, and the public who are attending in the Gallery.

“I believe you have endometriosis.” When Ami heard those words, she broke down in tears, not because she was scared but because, after 22 long years of unbelievable pain—of being dismissed or told, “It’s your weight,” or, “You are too stressed”—someone finally believed her. In January this year, she had surgery, which confirmed that she had endometriosis. It had progressed so far that both her fallopian tubes were blocked. She is now permanently infertile. Just like that, her dream of starting her own family was over, not because she did not try or because nothing was wrong, but because she was ignored and dismissed. Understandably, that is something that she can never forgive or forget.

Identifying endometriosis is complex, but Ami and too many other women have been utterly failed by our health service. I have one constituent who was so routinely misdiagnosed that it was implied she just had a sexually transmitted infection. Olivia has been waiting in limbo for six months at a time to find out if she can get a diagnosis appointment anywhere in Somerset.

It is a disgrace that women feel that their voice is not enough when it comes to their own health. It is obvious that awareness of endometriosis is far too low among the public and healthcare professionals. Women are waiting far too long to get access to diagnosis and treatment services.

I have two asks for the Minister on behalf of Ami, Olivia and many other women in Yeovil who have gone through the unthinkable. First, will she work with experts and patients to develop better public health messaging, awareness campaigns and greater training for primary healthcare professionals on endometriosis? Secondly, will she meet Ami and others to discuss their cases and explore how the NHS can not only learn from them but formally apologise and offer redress?

14:42

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott), who shows that it is not necessary to be suffering from endometriosis to be an endo warrior. We champion it because it affects everyone—people in the workplace, our mothers, our sisters and our friends—so I am very grateful that he has brought this debate to the House. I know he has had to try a few times to secure it.

I have not suffered from endometriosis myself, but I have come here to speak about my brave constituent Sanju Pal, who is in the Public Gallery. After six years of fighting a legal battle, she won a landmark case against her former employer for unfair dismissal at the employment appeal tribunal in London. I am proud to say that her case sets a legal precedent for endometriosis to be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010. I hope Members will bear with me as I tell her remarkable story. The truth is that not everyone should have to fight a legal battle for six years to get their just desserts, but Sanju—a Camden girl—managed that.

In 2018, Sanju was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. She had large fluid-filled cysts on both ovaries, which required an immediate operation. She returned to work a month later in severe pain. She could barely walk and had heavy bleeding because she had pushed herself too much to make promotion to senior manager. She took evidence to HR and told them how much pain she was in, and she was ignored. After three months of a phased return to work, she was sacked without warning. She was told to leave the building and not to contact anyone else. She had worked there for 10 years, and she was told to just walk out the door without telling anyone where she was going and why she had been sacked.

Sanju was sacked on a technicality: she was not ready for promotion within a required timeframe. It is known as an “up or out” policy, and it is used by many corporates. Employees can be dismissed if managers feel that they cannot be promoted within a certain timeframe. The termination letter Sanju received within minutes of the meeting she had did not actually state any reasons for her dismissal. It did not inform her about the right to appeal or refer to the policy that was being followed. She took it to an internal tribunal, where the High Court later found that the panel had completely disregarded the impact statement she had written for the meeting. The internal tribunal ruled that Sanju had not proved that her illness had an ongoing substantial effect on her daily life and stated that many women with endometriosis had no symptoms or mild symptoms, so it could not be taken seriously.

The tribunal initially rejected Sanju’s claim of disability discrimination and lacked any understanding of the physical impact of endometriosis on a woman’s body. She appealed that decision, and the High Court eventually ruled that she was unfairly dismissed from her job without her employer following a fair capability procedure or providing reasonable adjustments for her in her workplace after she was disabled by a condition over which she had no choice. Since her unfair dismissal in 2019, employers must follow the judgment on considering endometriosis as a disability and have to provide reasonable adjustments in the workplace.

I am very proud of my constituent’s tireless campaigning, but I go back to what I said: not everyone should have to go through the mental trauma that Sanju endured for six whole years while she fought this battle, and I do not expect them to. Workplaces should provide reasonable adjustments. It is shocking to me that not a single gynaecological condition is included in the disability guidance for the Equality Act and that although endometriosis can be classified as a disability, it is not automatically recognised as such. That basic change could have saved my constituent time, effort, mental anguish and the anxiety that she told me crippled her life for so long.

Countless other women across the country who are disabled by endometriosis are not given reasonable adjustments in the workplace. For example, in 2024, a Barclays banking analyst was required to work up to 48 hours a week while suffering from endometriosis because her line manager refused to allow any reasonable adjustments at her workplace. She told me that she now lives in Romania with her parents because she cannot afford the medical treatment and is unable to work because of that ordeal. One in 10 women suffer from endometriosis and 69% of sufferers say that they face discrimination at work. Cases like that are too common.

Women should not be forced to go to tribunal just to get the rights they deserve. That is why I want to push the Minister, who has been championing women’s rights for as long as I have known her, which is a very long time. Women should be given specific workplace conditions and the right to reasonable adjustments in their workplace. Endometriosis should be listed under the recurring and fluctuating impairments in the guidance for the Equality Act so that employers actually understand their legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments for women.

Beyond those important changes to the workplace, there is more for the Government to do to ensure that women suffering from this terrible condition get the rights they deserve. For a start, we urgently need better data on the women diagnosed with endometriosis in the UK. The statistic I quoted of one in 10 women having endometriosis, which many people will have read, is from studies in 2009. Indulge me for a second, Mr Dowd, while I talk about what happened 17 years ago. That was before we knew what coronavirus was. It was before Brexit, when we were still in the European Union. It was before my children started saying “six-seven” at every opportunity. It was before I had to go to the hairdresser every week to dye my hair. Surely we need an update to the data to find out what is happening to women now. We cannot rely on statistics for women’s health from 2009. We are better than that as a Parliament.

Only when we truly understand the scale of the issue can we adequately tackle it. If we do not have the right data, we will not be able to tackle it. The provision of services for endometriosis needs to be strategically planned, and it has to have location data. As a London MP, I know the advantages that exist in London. We have to look outside London so that this does not become a postcode lottery for women. [Interruption.] There was a cheer there because most London MPs do not say that, but I thought I would say it. We need to have a greater understanding of the parts of the country that have greater need.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

With what the hon. Member has just said about having a greater understanding, does she agree that, while we all have to play a role, the British Medical Association could help by ensuring that the many GPs across the United Kingdom have a greater awareness and understanding of the need?

[Tulip Siddiq]

I agree with the hon. Member. One of the things that has struck me is how few people actually understand what the condition is. I was having a conversation with someone who I would say is a fairly well-informed man, and he said to me, “I thought it was just a heavy period.” He said that because no one had ever talked to him about it. Medical professionals need to have a better understanding, but we need to have a better understanding generally of women’s health conditions overall.

Does the Minister have plans to improve the data collection of women with endometriosis, and, if she does, how does she intend to utilise the data that comes forward? There is a lot more that I could say about the training in the Department for Work and Pensions on assessing disability benefits for women with endometriosis. There should also be a mandate that employers have a gynaecological health policy and human resources training.

There are others who want to speak, so I will round up by saying that the fact that only 11% of employers in the UK have a menstrual health policy is a shocking statistic. For me, it highlights that there is widespread discrimination against women with these health conditions. For as long as our employment rights ignore the gynaecological conditions of millions of British women, the injustice will continue. I applaud Sanju for her legal battle, but I do see it not as just a victory for her. It is a victory for countless women who are suffering and have not had the ability to go through that legal battle.

I have not touched on the fact—although it will be obvious to many people—that I am from an ethnic minority background. Growing up in the household that I did, I never heard the words “menopause” or “endometriosis”. It is not that women around me did not suffer from those conditions; there was a stigma attached to them and it was taboo to talk about women’s health problems. In 2026 we have got to tackle that, and ensure that women from south Asian backgrounds talk to their daughters about it. They must tell them, “If you are suffering, please don’t suffer in silence, because this isn’t something to be ashamed of.”

14:52

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is obviously a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for leading today’s debate on this crucial issue. Support for women’s gynaecology services is so important. I know from speaking to many ladies, and indeed nurses, back home in Northern Ireland that endometriosis services in particular are suffering drastically. The conversation about that must be had now. It is a conversation that has been had a few times in Westminster Hall, as well as on the Floor of the House through questions.

It is a pleasure to see the Minister in her place. She is earning her money today, as this is the second debate she has responded to. It is a genuine pleasure. I know the Minister has pursued this topic over a number of years as an MP, but now she has the opportunity to respond to the requests from the hon. Member for Ipswich and from me, and I look forward to her response.

Endometriosis is a chronic and often debilitating condition affecting around one in 10 women of reproductive age, yet it remains widely underdiagnosed and clinically misunderstood. In Northern Ireland, many women face long waiting times for diagnosis and treatment, limited access to specialist services, and significant pressures within gynaecology pathways. As a result of all that, patients often endure years of pain and uncertainty, as well as disruption to their daily lives, work, education and family life in general.

I have spoken with numerous young people about this over the years, and have personal experience of it from the women in my life. When my wife and I got married, the doctor told Sandra that, “If you have a baby quickly, everything will clear up.” Well, no it did not—and three babies later, it still had not cleared up. I am not better than anybody else, but I have some knowledge of what it is like for a woman to deal with that every day.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I really value the hon. Member’s contribution, which has been heartfelt and personal. Does he agree that Endo Warriors Northern Ireland deserves credit and acknowledgment for the work that it has done for the women across Northern Ireland who are impacted by this postcode lottery?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady speaks well, on behalf of not only her own constituents but all constituents and ladies across Northern Ireland.

My mother also had various problems with endometriosis over the years, and one of my staff members—a young girl who got married just over a year ago—has had what were probably the worst problems with endometriosis that I had ever seen. Obviously, as her employer, I tried to be as sympathetic as I could so that she could have a few days off work, as she had to go to hospital and for appointments—it was endless. We always encouraged her to get married, and she met the right fella and did so. We hope that the situation will change for her.

The personal experiences of women show the huge, wide-scale issues around birth control. At as young an age as 14 or 15, girls are often prescribed birth control to deal with painful periods, as the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) will be aware, given her intervention. The issues often slip under the radar without further investigation, meaning that the same women find themselves worse than ever in their mid-20’s, with undiagnosed endometriosis alongside possible fertility issues, of which the hon. Member for Ipswich gave some examples. Given that conditions such as endometriosis are so widely known to be underdiagnosed at the earlier stages, it is beyond me why more has not been done to ensure that the problems are investigated as early as possible. That shortfall for us in Northern Ireland, and what I suspect is the shortfall everywhere across this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, needs to be addressed.

We also see issues around the waiting lists, in the indeterminable wait to try to find out what is wrong, and to get surgical treatment for it. The waiting time in Northern Ireland is 18 months. That forces women to use their savings or money that they do not have to go private, as living with the condition is described as unbearable—I know just how unbearable it was for the young lady on my staff, my wife and my mother.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I understand exactly what the hon. Member is saying about the waits; the average waiting time for a diagnosis has now gone up to nine years and four months. Where I am from in Cornwall, an endo café has been set up. I went to it once, and it was heartbreaking to be told so many stories about waits for surgeries and diagnoses. One issue that they raised was that we have only one specialist endometriosis nurse in Cornwall. Does the hon. Member think that having more specialist nurses would help?

[Jim Shannon]

My friend and colleague, the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton), referred to that earlier in the debate. The hon. Lady underlines that point strongly, for which I thank her.

The situation in Northern Ireland is dire—in Northern Ireland, we use that word to describe many such services that are just not up to scratch. Specialist pathways and centres are more developed in other parts of the United Kingdom; although I was very sorry to hear from the hon. Lady that it is now a nine-year waiting time—is that correct?

[Jayne Kirkham]

indicated assent.

[Jim Shannon]

My goodness—that is quite unbelievable. We tend to find that the situation on the mainland is better than back home in Northern Ireland. I fear that Northern Ireland has fallen far behind, and that little consideration is being given to the impact that that is having. The capital funding from the Department of Health in Northern Ireland does not go far enough to accommodate everything that we need. How many more women must suffer for how many more years before the scale of the issue is realised?

It is my duty, not only as my party’s spokesperson for health but because of my personal experiences over the years, to represent such issues as endometriosis services. It is no secret that more must be done: more engagement, more research and more resourcing. I look to the Minister and ask about the research being done—I will make a request similar to the one I made to her in the debate we had on sudden unexplained death in childhood this morning. Some advances are taking place, but it is questionable whether they will be expedited quickly enough to catch up everyone. I also strongly but politely ask the Minister to discuss the issue with Mike Nesbitt—the Northern Ireland Executive Minister who holds the health portfolio—in the hope that this time next year, in Endometriosis Action Month, we can come together again and that the situation will be better for all those thousands of women across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland who deserve better treatment.

15:00

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for securing this important debate. I welcome to the House all the women in the Public Gallery.

I have also heard from many women in my constituency who have lived with the devastating impact of endometriosis. It is shocking that so many have had to endure years of pain, uncertainty, dismissal and a lack of access to timely diagnosis and specialist endometriosis services. According to the charity Endometriosis UK, it takes on average nine years and four months to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis in the UK—nearly a decade of a woman’s life blighted by debilitating pain, missed employment and educational opportunities, declining mental health, difficulties with fertility, and being told far too often that what they are experiencing is normal.

We know that one in 10 women are affected, yet awareness remains far too low among the public and healthcare professionals. The economic cost alone is estimated at £11 billion a year. Behind the statistics, however, are real people, real families and real suffering. My constituent Lucy, who is a teacher, told me that she has been suffering tremendously every month, unable to work on the first day of her cycle due to the pain and side effects. Every single month she has been left unable to stand, doubled over in pain, and with dizziness and vomiting. After nine years of debilitating pain, fertility issues, being refused treatment and being told that some people just suffer, she has finally had a laparoscopy, which revealed that she has endometriosis. She is hoping that she can now grow her family, but it should never have taken so long for a diagnosis.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

I can reiterate that point; my partner Emma has severe endometriosis. She is regularly crippled—barely able to get off the sofa and in absolute agony. She has been told for years that this is normal and that there is nothing wrong. She had to fight repeatedly to get the diagnostic surgery that she needed, which confirmed that she has endometriosis. It is a very common story, and it is completely outrageous that people are told that crippling pain, meaning that they cannot get off the sofa, is just a normal cycle.

[Liz Jarvis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important point. Women should not have to fight to get the treatment they need. I have also heard from Kelly, who told me:

“Every month I am in debilitating pain and it is soul destroying. I cannot take days off work every month and there is nothing I can do but suffer. It affects my work, relationships and is ruining my life.”

Then there is Lucy, who has worked in the NHS for 20 years and is now a clinical nurse specialist for endometriosis. She told me:

“I grew up during a time when endometriosis was never mentioned. I was told that periods are painful, so the monthly debilitating pain and heavy periods I experienced were normalised.”

She was finally diagnosed with endometriosis in her mid-30s.

Women should not have to put up with the pain of this debilitating disease, and I urge the Government to take urgent action to tackle the postcode lottery for endometriosis care, address gynaecological waiting lists, improve training and awareness among healthcare professionals, and ensure full implementation of NICE guidelines, with clear referral pathways, so that no woman has to suffer for years without answers or support.

I am sure the Minister agrees that addressing delays in diagnosis, gaps in care and inequalities in access are of the utmost importance. More broadly, this debate highlights a wider crisis in women’s healthcare—from the scandal of unsafe maternity units to the nearly 750,000 women currently on gynaecology waiting lists, over 30% of whom have waited for more than a year from referral to treatment. It must be addressed, because women are being failed and society suffers as a result.

I hope the Minister also agrees that access to mental healthcare should be expanded for women with endometriosis. Dismissed symptoms and diagnosis delays left 98% of respondents to an Endometriosis UK survey reporting an impact on their mental health, and 63% of respondents describing that impact as significant. I hope that the Minister will consider expanding mental healthcare provision to give the countless women dealing with the psychological toll of endometriosis the support that they need. We need a system that is fit for purpose, which validates women, takes their symptoms seriously and provides timely, compassionate and effective care. I do not think that that is too much to ask.

Alongside investment in the workforce, improved access to GPs, continuity of care and a step change in research to address painful conditions that women have suffered from for far too long without remedy, are all absolutely essential.

Ultimately, this debate is about delivering better outcomes and proper support for those affected by endometriosis. I hope that the Government will tackle this issue, showing clear leadership and transparency, to ensure that every woman with endometriosis has access to the right care at the right time.

15:05

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) on bringing this important debate to this Chamber, and I thank all the women who have campaigned on this issue, especially those in the Public Gallery today, for their tireless work to make us all aware of this crippling condition.

In the UK, endometriosis now takes an average of almost 10 years to diagnose, leaving many women in terrible pain after repeated GP visits and long waits for referral. One of my staff members has endometriosis and with her permission I will share part of her story, because it reflects what too many women across the country still endure; indeed, we have heard many such stories in Westminster Hall today. Having a debate on the issue in this Chamber is not only about raising awareness but about taking away stigma, allowing women to really talk about what they experience, and not make them feel that they are making it all up.

For years, my staff member experienced pain so severe that she would sometimes lie on the bathroom floor shaking, nauseated and unsure whether or not she needed urgent medical help, yet she was too embarrassed to explain what was happening because it was connected to her period. She was told more than once by GPs that her symptoms could be caused by anxiety, or that perhaps she had a low pain tolerance. She began to doubt herself. Too often, pain linked to menstruation is minimised, normalised or treated as something that women should simply tolerate.

It was nearly a decade before my staff member received a diagnosis of endometriosis. She described repeated appointments, invasive tests and endless battles just to be referred for scans. It was only when a young female GP finally listened and believed her that things changed. When she finally received her diagnosis, she cried, not because she was frightened but because she was finally being believed. Even then, the diagnosis came with no explanation of what it meant for her future. There was no discussion of fertility and no real guidance on managing a chronic condition that had already shaped years of her life. As we have already heard today, her experience is not unusual, and I know there are many other similar stories out there.

Endometriosis UK’s latest report found that 39% of respondents had to visit their GP 10 or more times before their GP even suspected that they had endometriosis. Almost 50% of those attending hospitals with endometriosis were sent home without treatment. How shocking is it that nearly half of women who go to hospital because of endometriosis leave with no help whatsoever?

Endometriosis is a progressive condition. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can mean worsening pain, damage to organs such as the bowel or bladder, and for some women severe consequences for their fertility. Every year of delay allows the condition to progress, making treatment more complex and outcomes worse. Some women in their 20s are left facing hysterectomies; some require bowel surgery or even a stoma, because the condition has advanced unchecked. Also, diagnosis is significantly less likely for women of colour, for women born outside the UK and for women whose main language is not English.

However, delayed diagnosis is only one part of the problem. Access to treatment is also constrained by the wider crisis in gynaecology services. Over 500,000 women are now on gynaecology waiting lists, which have grown faster than the waiting lists for any other condition. Again, we should ask ourselves the question, why might that be?

While women sit on waiting lists, they continue trying to work through pain that is often invisible to others. My staff member described the awkwardness of explaining why she was unwell, because women’s health still faces so much stigma. That taboo has real consequences. Research suggests that 80% of women who take time off work because of period health issues do not tell their employers the real reason. Women are managing serious pain in silence because they fear embarrassment, disbelief or being seen as less capable than other employees.

An Office for National Statistics study published last year found that women diagnosed with endometriosis experienced lower earnings and reduced employment over time. Amelia, one of my Bath constituents, described to me living with symptoms since the age of 12. She described her struggles to manage a full-time job with the condition. Amelia asked one simple question: “If this was your daughter, what would you do?”

As the Government review the women’s health strategy, I hope Ministers will ensure that endometriosis is taken seriously. GP training must improve, and referral pathways must be faster to diagnose women quickly and then treat them without delay. Inequality of care must also be addressed. I urge the Government to commit to the Endometriosis UK target of reducing the average diagnosis time to one year or less by 2030 and moving diagnosis and treatment into the community. Let us not wait any longer. Let today be the day for change.

15:10

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and a pleasure to see the Minister in her place. She has been a doughty campaigner not only for children’s health but for women’s health over many years. I am pleased to see her in her place. I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for securing this important debate. We share a common goal because I have been applying for a Westminster Hall debate on endometriosis since I arrived in this place. I am delighted to see it finally happen.

Endometriosis was a word that I grew up with in my house, because my mum suffered with it and ended up having a full hysterectomy in her mid-30s. As a woman in her mid-30s, I am watching the cycle repeat, but with my friends. I have seen two of my closest friends being gaslit and for over a decade being told, “Maybe it’s IBS; maybe you are a bit of a hypochondriac; have you considered gluten intolerance? Could it be stress? How is your lifestyle?” Only now, after both of them, I am sad to say, suffered ectopic pregnancies, are they being taken seriously and endometriosis is being explored for both of them, which will explain the pain they have both been in for a decade—for one of them, two decades.

Of the constituents who have got in touch with me since I was elected, there was one mother who got in touch who had suffered from endometriosis. It took nine years to get her diagnosis and she said, “My daughter is now starting her periods and I am seeing the same thing repeat itself. She is showing the same symptoms that I had as a teenage girl. We go to doctors and I try to advocate and fight for her, but we are told, ‘Maybe she just has a low pain threshold. Have you considered putting her on birth control to ease the symptoms of her periods?’” That is heartbreaking for that mother. She is not fighting for herself any more; she is fighting for the next generation of young women, who need to get support as early as possible so that their diagnosis can be made and their treatment options explored as early as possible.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does my hon. Friend agree that for a lot of these conditions it is vital to have more research? For example, there could be a genetic link that is not explained yet, and it would make it so much easier for daughters of women who had endometriosis to get much faster treatment and diagnosis. Research is a vital part of the picture.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend about research into gynaecological conditions. If we invested as much into women’s health as we have done over many decades into men’s health, maybe we would not have so many different types of Viagra and we might have a response to women’s health.

Clinicians, importantly, do not have to have specialist training in gynaecological conditions when they go through their training. It is not mandatory, so it is vital to ensure that such training is available and mandated for all clinicians, especially those in general practice, because the most important thing we can do as MPs is break down the barriers that our constituents face daily. Fixing the way we perceive endometriosis as a country is one of the things that we can do, so that we can look back on our time here and think about how we made a difference for women up and down the country.

I know the Minister shares my ambition to do better for all women, so I ask her: what are the Government doing to break down the barriers to earlier diagnosis for women suffering with gynaecological issues, especially endometriosis? Does she believe that there are benefits to having dedicated gynaecological wards in hospitals? In my local hospital, St Richard’s in Chichester, there is no specialist gynaecological ward; patients are put in different wards depending on which procedure they have had, which means that they are potentially not receiving the specialist aftercare they could be. Finally, does the Minister believe that all medical professionals should have mandated gynaecological training so that they can give support as early as possible to those who so desperately need it?

15:15

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for securing this debate—the opportunity to raise the importance of this debilitating condition with the Minister today is extremely welcome. I welcome her to her place; I must say that the contributions today have all been excellent, and she has been given a significant to-do list, which I am sure she is equal to.

Endometriosis is estimated to affect 10% of women. It is a condition that brings chronic pain and worsening physical health and can pose a threat to fertility. It devastates lives and leaves many women excluded from education and employment.

Thanks to the tireless campaigning of groups such as Endometriosis UK, and of the women in the Public Gallery today—whom I welcome—many of us are increasingly aware of the condition. Despite those efforts, however, the average diagnosis time has steadily increased since 2020. As we have heard, it now takes an astounding nine years and four months on average for women just to get a diagnosis. That is unacceptable.

That shocking amount of time to get recognition of the condition is indicative of the wider issue of institutional misogyny and the dismissal of women’s pain. On average, endometriosis patients also wait three and a half years from first noticing symptoms before seeking medical help, largely due to the normalisation of severe period pain.

Awareness of endometriosis among the public and healthcare professionals is still too low. Some 82% of patients have reported being told by their healthcare practitioners, prior to diagnosis, that they were making a fuss, or that their symptoms were normal. That is a recurring theme in women’s health. When I was involved in the all-party parliamentary group on birth trauma in the previous Parliament, we heard appalling testimony from women who had suffered serious injury giving birth only to be told, when they went to their GP afterwards, “What do you expect? You have just had a baby.” Many of them were in fact seriously injured. That institutionalised acceptance that women should suffer is something we need to address. I hope the Government are going to take that seriously—I am sure they are.

The nationwide tales are echoed by cases that I have heard from my own constituents. Lucy first got in touch with me in 2024, having already experienced years of debilitating pain that was dismissed and left undiagnosed. It was eventually confirmed to be endometriosis, but she struggled to get appropriate support on the NHS. She has told me of the grave impact that the pain has had on her quality of life, including missing out on education. Following an exhausting journey of many healthcare appointments, she is still suffering and is instead learning to manage the pain herself—yet, inspiringly, although she still lives with debilitating problems, she has now returned to the university studies that were broken off six years ago due to the pain.

I want to mention the different but related condition of polycystic ovary syndrome. Another constituent, Bethany, was left waiting months for an appointment after being diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome at 18. Following scores of appointment cancellations and administrative errors, Bethany decided to take action herself, setting up the Cysters Circle, a group that regularly meets around the constituency to support women and girls with conditions such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome.

I commend the hard work and fortitude of women such as Bethany and Lucy in campaigning for awareness of these conditions and providing the space where women can support each other—but they have to do so because of the barriers and woeful lack of support they experienced from the healthcare system. We must do more to raise awareness of these conditions and transform the quality of women’s healthcare across the country.

The failure of endometriosis diagnoses in primary care settings is adding even more pressure to our hospitals and forcing women to suffer for longer than necessary. Women often have to present multiple times to NHS services before getting the help they need. Prior to diagnosis, more than half of women are forced to go to A&E due to their symptoms.

As well as investing in tackling NHS waiting times for gynaecological services, we urge the Government to implement public health messaging, awareness campaigns and greater training for primary healthcare professionals. They should work with regulators and professional bodies to strengthen expectations on endometriosis education and awareness. Existing NICE guidelines must be fully implemented to establish clear, standardised referral pathways when women arrive at their GP appointment.

The experience of women trying to access endometriosis services reflects how our NHS suffered under the Conservatives, leading to some appalling outcomes in women’s health. Most maternity units are not deemed sufficiently safe; thousands of women have suffered a miscarriage without referral to the appropriate NHS services; waits for breast, ovarian and other genealogical cancers are unacceptably high; and, as we have seen with endometriosis, millions of women continue to suffer in appalling pain as they languish on waiting lists.

It is alarming that, in the face of those issues, the Government have discarded the target of having a women’s health hub in every part of the country. That decision undermines the effectiveness of the women’s health strategy. I hope the Minister will recommit to implementing those health hubs. Women’s health services are often too fragmented and difficult to access; removing the requirement for those hubs could lead to closures that would hurt access for women in need of care, and shows the wrong priorities.

The Liberal Democrats would give everyone the right to see a GP within seven days, including access to a named GP for patients with long-term conditions to ensure continuity of care. That would ensure that women suffering from long-term gynaecological conditions were listened to and got the support that they need.

The normalisation of women’s pain must stop. We must ensure that our health system fully supports those suffering with long-term gynaecological conditions so that women such as Lucy and Bethany, and the women in the Public Gallery today, are not left to battle through pain alone.

15:21

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Hon. Members have share powerful and distressing stories and experiences from their constituents. They are typified by Monica and I pay tribute to her for coming here to explain her story.

We must recognise the reality faced by many women and girls living with endometriosis. For too many, it means years of pain and possibly being dismissed, and it definitely means lives put on hold. From a GP’s perspective, the diagnosis is frequently delayed because symptoms overlap with other conditions such as fibroids, adenomyosis, irritable bowel syndrome, PCOS or pelvic inflammatory disease.

However, this debate is really about access, and there is a risk that current changes will make access worse, not better. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) is a stalwart for raising that point as a central issue. The last Government drastically increased testing. They rolled out 161 community diagnostic centres across the country, which carried out ultrasounds, MRI and CT scans, and blood tests. That has helped with diagnosis by ruling in endometriosis and, equally importantly, ruling it out. That is not to mention the elective surgical hubs, 48 of which were delivering gynaecological procedures by March 2024. Those were important steps, but capacity remains constrained.

The first women’s health strategy, which committed to reducing diagnostic times for endometriosis, was also published in 2022. That strategy is now due to be renewed. In March 2026, the Women and Equalities Committee published a report from its inquiry into the menstrual health of girls and young women, which states that women’s health has not been “sufficiently prioritised” in recent proposed reforms to the healthcare system. The Government’s plan to renew the women’s health strategy is an opportunity to do so. Will the Minster confirm that those recommendations will be considered, and confirm when the renewed women’s health strategy will be published?

[Mims Davies (East Grinstead and Uckfield) (Con)]

The points my hon. Friend makes, as a clinician and an MP, are very important. Eleanor, my constituent from East Grinstead, has faced dismissal and delay. She has multiple issues, including pelvic congestion, which she says have ripped her life apart. Will my hon. Friend talk about the impact on A&E if that health strategy does not work? Far too many women see their symptoms as normal and extreme pain is dismissed too easily, which can lead to A&E trips.

[Dr Evans]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising her constituent’s case; Eleanor must be suffering, and the aim is to try to get more people into primary care so they can get the support that they need. That view is shared by both sides of this House and that leftward shift into primary prevention would be helpful. Access will be crucial, which is why some of the Government’s changes to that access—which I will touch on later—are concerning.

Women’s health hubs were intended to improve access to care for menstrual problems. They were rolled out by the last Government with £25 million of investment and 39 out of 42 were in place. However, after Labour came in, it removed the national targets in January 2025, leading to an article from the Health Service Journal in April 2025 that stated:

“Most integrated care systems lack a women’s health hub offering full services—contrary to government claims—according to research seen by HSJ.”

It is not clear whether those numbers have improved and what the situation now looks like. I ask the Minister to provide any updates she has on those women’s health hubs, how they are functioning and whether they are fully operational; if she does not have that information—I know she is a new Minister—I would be happy to receive a letter on that.

That leads on to Endometriosis UK pointing out that there have been shortages in trained clinicians and diagnostic specialists. We know that as we expand community diagnostic centres, that will be really important. Under the last Government, there was a workforce plan. We have heard talk of a workforce plan, but it has been delayed multiple times by the Government. I wonder whether there is a date for when that will be finalised, because it is really important.

Finally, the heart of this debate is access to primary care. In a debate on endometriosis at the start of this month, the Minister for Secondary Care said:

“We have introduced Jess’s rule, which requires GPs to rethink diagnoses for their patients.”—[Official Report, 5 March 2026; Vol. 781, c. 1068WH.]

That rightly encourages GPs to rethink the diagnosis and refer when needed, but at the same time, every referral will now have to be routed through advice and guidance. In effect, it is moving to a single point of access, with a system explicitly aimed at diverting a significant proportion of referrals back to GPs. The new advice and guidance are aiming for about 25% of GP referrals to be diverted back to GPs for “10 high volume specialities”—of which gynaecology will be one—meaning one in four referrals will be bounced back under the neighbourhood health framework released 17 March.

On the one hand, GPs are told to refer; on the other hand, the system is designed to send those patients back, which risks patients being kept on waiting lists and away from secondary and specialist care. That really matters for endometriosis. It is a perfect test case, and the new NICE guideline is crystal clear. Recommendation 1.1.3 states:

“Gynaecology services for women with suspected or confirmed endometriosis should have access to: a gynaecologist with expertise in diagnosing and managing endometriosis, including training and skills in laparoscopic surgery; a gynaecology specialist nurse with expertise in endometriosis; a multidisciplinary pain management service; a healthcare professional with an interest in gynaecological imaging and fertility services.”

All those services are gatekept as secondary care. Someone might have a normal scan in primary care, primary care treatments might fail and a GP might know that they will need to be referred to a specialist—yet they will not be able to get access. Women’s waits could become longer, not shorter. I have tabled multiple parliamentary questions on advice and guidance and have received only holding answers, despite the changes coming in on 1 April.

I ask the Minister three questions. First, does she accept that mandating advice and guidance risks delaying referral? Secondly, how will this system avoid conflicting with Jess’s rule? Thirdly, will GPs retain the ability to refer directly into secondary care when clinically necessary?

Endometriosis is already hard enough to diagnose and treat; for patients, it is harder still. If access is to improve, the Government must set out clearly how this new system will work. If they cannot do that, they risk making access worse, rather than better—and that is something none of us wants to see.

15:29

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mrs Sharon Hodgson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) on securing this very important debate. I am honoured to respond to it on behalf of my hon. Friend the Minister for Secondary Care, who unfortunately cannot be here today—this area of policy would normally fall under her portfolio.

I want to start by thanking Monica for sharing her story with us today through her MP and—as we heard—friend, and for being with us today in the Public Gallery, along with a large number of women who are suffering from this most painful and debilitating condition. Monica’s distressing experience highlights that we still have more work to do to ensure that all women with endometriosis can access the care they need.

As we have heard, for too many years women with endometriosis have felt unheard or dismissed and have been left to cope alone. We recognise the wide impact the condition has on education, work, family life and wellbeing, as well as on mental health, as the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) said, and we acknowledge that that is unacceptable.

This year’s Endometriosis Awareness Month theme is “endometriosis doesn’t wait”. That highlights the urgent need to reduce diagnosis times, improve care and address the impact of this debilitating condition. The Government are not waiting: we have already taken action to ensure that women with endometriosis have access to the services that they need. Many women spend years seeking answers, as we have heard today, being misdiagnosed, having symptoms minimised or being passed from service to service. The experience highlighted by all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate and by Endometriosis UK’s recent report underlines why earlier diagnosis and consistent, compassionate care must be central to our approach.

That is why we have introduced Jess’s rule, requiring GPs to reconsider diagnosis where symptoms persist, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) mentioned. We are also rolling out Martha’s rule, giving in-patients in acute hospitals in England the ability to initiate a rapid review of their case by someone outside their immediate care team. Those measures will help ensure that women’s concerns are not dismissed.

[Dr Evans]

Those were the words that the Minister’s colleague read out in the previous debate, but I have no gripes about the Department saying the same thing. My question is about Jess’s rule and its interaction when there is a single point of referral. There will be a rub between GPs who say that someone needs to be seen because they might have a diagnosis of endometriosis and the system saying that those patients will be bounced back. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what that rule will look like in practice, because endometriosis is a good example to demonstrate it.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I was going to come on to what the hon. Gentleman said about that, as well as his request for an update on women’s health hubs. I will take the opportunity to write to him about that update and his specific question on how referrals will work. I am aware that colleagues have raised issues with referrals and, as the hon. Gentleman says, endometriosis will be a good example of whether that system is working as it should. I do not have the answer to hand, but I commit to writing to him on that.

We are also expanding access to diagnostic services. Community diagnostic centres are being rolled out countrywide for women on gynaecological pathways. Last month, 106 centres offered out-of-hours appointments so that women could get vital tests around work and caring responsibilities.

We are modernising how specialist care is delivered. In September, we announced the new online hospital NHS Online, which will be unconstrained by geographical boundaries. It will better align clinical capacity with patient demand so that patients will be seen and triaged faster. Earlier this year, we confirmed that menstrual problems, often a sign of conditions such as endometriosis, will be among the first nine conditions available for referral from 2027. Details are being worked through ahead of next year’s launch. Additionally, we are supporting integrated care boards to expand women’s health services at neighbourhood level, building on the successful pilot of women’s health hubs, so that good practice is spread and services are improved everywhere.

NHS England is currently updating the service specification for severe endometriosis, which will improve the standards of care for women with severe endometriosis by ensuring specialist endometriosis services have access to the most up-to-date evidence and advice. That will be published in due course.

[Mims Davies]

The Minister is being very generous in giving way, and I wish her extremely well in her new post. On the point of the reconstruction of how services work, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans): could the Minister undertake to do work, for people like my constituent Eleanor, so that there is a reduction in A&E visits because the other services are working? It is in the interests of the integrated care board to deliver these changes.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes—I or my colleague in the Department will undertake to look at that and ensure the hon. Lady receives a response.

In response to questions on data and research raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq), and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), the Department, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, has commissioned several studies focused on endometriosis diagnosis, treatment and patient experience. At present, the NIHR is funding six active research awards, totalling an investment of approximately £7.8 million. That includes a new £2.3 million award on the effectiveness of pain management for endometriosis, starting this month.

In response to the hon. Member for Strangford asking the Department to engage with health Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive to discuss any learnings, best practice and areas to improve, I commit to do that. That is a great suggestion.

The hon. Member for Bath asked me about the Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into reproductive health conditions. I am grateful for the work that Committee is doing and welcome its report on that important topic. The Department will be issuing an official response to the report’s recommendations in due course.

Research has already led to new treatments being made available, including NICE approval of two pills to treat endometriosis, relugolix and linzagolix—oh, to have the skill of a doctor in pronouncing these complicated drug names! Those drugs are estimated to help around 1,000 women with severe endometriosis for whom other treatment options have not been effective.

No one should have to put up with chronic pain, which is one of the most common symptoms of endometriosis. The renewed women’s health strategy is under development, so I cannot say exactly what will be included, but the published strategy will set out the actions we are taking to improve women’s experiences, including around pain. As part of our engagement informing the renewal of that strategy, we held a roundtable on women’s experiences of pain, chaired by Baroness Merron and attended by women with lived experience and by expert organisations. That roundtable is informing our work to renew the strategy.

Better care also depends on better understanding. Improving public and healthcare professionals’ awareness of endometriosis will reduce the stigma, of which a number of Members spoke, and will ensure that symptoms are recognised rather than normalised or dismissed. In response to the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate about DWP training for assessors, I commit to write to the DWP to make that very point.

In response to the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), the General Medical Council has strengthened women’s health representation in training. Since last year it has required UK medical graduates to pass the medical licensing assessment, encouraging a better understanding of common women’s health problems. That assessment includes topics on women’s health, including endometriosis.

Women’s health is also built into the Royal College of General Practitioners’ curriculum for trainee GPs, which brings together educational resources and clinical guidance to support primary care teams. Clinical guidance has been strengthened, too: NICE updated its endometriosis guidelines in 2024 to support more consistent decision making and faster routes to specialist input. NICE is working with the NHS to ensure the adoption of this best practice for endometriosis care, including access to approved medicines.

Research indicates that women’s experiences of healthcare are not uniform, as we have heard, and particularly that outcomes can vary sharply between different communities. Ethnically diverse women with endometriosis can encounter additional hurdles in getting a diagnosis and appropriate support. We will not accept those disparities as inevitable. Our ambition is for a fairer Britain, where people live well for longer and spend less time in ill health, and where women, whatever their background, can rely on high-quality care.

[Tulip Siddiq]

My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) has just appeared, and under parliamentary conventions is not allowed to intervene, so I rise to say that she is hosting a screening of a BAFTA-winning film about endometriosis and the experiences of women in the Jubilee Room at 4.30 pm, if anyone is interested.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That was an excellent intervention, I have to say; I am glad that we will all be out of here in time to go and enjoy that. For the ladies and gentlemen in the Gallery, do not worry: it is free entry and no invite is needed. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) for all she does on women’s health. She has led the way, more than most in Parliament, on the issue in her time here. That is recognised, and I thank her for it.

We are hopefully shifting the centre of gravity of care from hospitals to communities, with neighbourhood services designed around local need. Earlier this month, we published a neighbourhood health framework, setting out three reform agendas for ICBs, local authorities and civil society to deliver the aims of neighbourhood health. We have done this to improve services for people who need routine healthcare; to improve proactive care, including maintaining and developing access to women’s health services; and to deliver better alternatives to hospital care.

[Adam Dance]

Ami is at home watching, and thanks everyone for speaking, but one of the things she said would help her is continuity in seeing the same GP. As we heard earlier, it took 22 years for her to be diagnosed. The other issue she faces is that she cannot have children, and raising the limit for fertility treatment would be helpful. Will the Minister arrange to meet Ami with me?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing the details of Ami’s case to us. Waiting 22 years for a diagnosis is shocking, and I suppose it would have been very difficult to have continuity of care over such a long time, but I take on board the point that he makes. When we—myself included—go to the GP, we often see a different person every time. As I said, this is not my brief, so I will feed his request for a meeting back to the Minister for Secondary Care. I cannot promise on her behalf, but we have heard his request.

The framework I was just outlining provides clarity and consistency, supporting joined-up partnership between ICBs and local authorities, working together to develop locally led neighbourhood health plans. This will hopefully address some of the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) about continuity of care.

Since coming into office, this Government have delivered over 5 million extra appointments in our first year; reduced the numbers on gynaecological waiting lists by over 24,000 women; and given women easier access to the morning-after pill, free of charge. A lot done; a lot more to do. We have made strong progress in turning the commitments in the last Government’s women’s health strategy, which the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth highlighted, into tangible action. Our renewed strategy will set out how this Government are taking further steps to improve women’s health as we deliver the 10-year health plan. It will address gaps from the 2022 strategy, and go further to create a system that listens to women, tackles health inequalities and makes progress on conditions such as endometriosis.

Renewing the strategy will help identify and remove enduring barriers to high-quality care, such as long waits for diagnosis, and will ensure professionals listen and respond to women’s needs. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich for bringing forward this important debate, and all hon. Members for sharing so many of their constituents’ stories. I give special thanks to Monica and all the women who are in the Public Gallery to bear witness and push us to do more. We have heard them, and I commit to doing what I can to ensure that their efforts have not been in vain.

15:46

[Jack Abbott]

I thank the Minister for her detailed speech. I look forward to working with her over the coming months and years on these important issues. I thank everybody who has contributed and shared not just the experiences of their constituents—as awful and harrowing as they often are—but some deeply personal stories. It is not often in this Chamber that we have the time to do so, and it was welcome that we were able to today.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq) for plugging the film showing next door—I was also just about to do that. It is called “This is Endometriosis” and it starts at 4.30 pm. It is free of charge, although I do not know whether the Minister is going to be on the doors herself. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) for hosting us there.

I give final thanks to all the women who have joined us today in the Public Gallery. I thank Monica Thomas for her fearless advocacy for so many women locally. Faye Ramsey has collected nearly 100 stories from women who have been badly failed for so long locally, and she is also pushing for greater education in schools and far better practice in the workplace—I thank Faye for all of her work.

I also thank Zoe Wright, Evie Lapworth, Evie Niblock, Siana Lynch, Kelly Harris-Flatt, Sanju, and Monica’s partner, Aaron. They should all be incredibly proud of their advocacy for so many women locally. I know that they, like me, will not be satisfied by just shining a light on the issue; they want to shift the dial too. I will stand side by side with them, as will many other Members, to ensure that every woman has access to the services that they need, ultimately changing lives for the better.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered access to endometriosis services.

15:48

Sitting suspended.

Reproductive Coercion

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

15:53

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Natalie Fleet will move the motion and the Minister will respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up. We are going to vote shortly; I will suspend the sitting for 15 minutes for the first vote, and for another 10 minutes if there is another.

[Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the identification and prosecution of reproductive coercion.

We have all heard the narrative about the devious woman who gets pregnant to get what she wants: “She’s got pregnant to trap him. She’s after his money.” That was what I heard on loop from my community—

16:00

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:09

On resuming—

[Natalie Fleet]

We have all heard the narrative—the one where the devious woman gets pregnant to trap the man: “She’s only after his money. She just wants to trap him.” That was what I heard on loop when I was impregnated as a child. If anyone questioned why he, an older man in a position of power, got a 15-year-old girl pregnant, I did not hear them.

I have also never heard any woman saying, “He did this to trap me.” It is not something that we say or acknowledge, even when it is really clear that that is what is happening. That is why it is so important—in the public interest, even—that the story of Olivia Nervo is heard.

Liv’s story exposes a form of domestic abuse that our legal system in the UK still struggles to recognise. Liv and her twin sister, Mim, are incredibly successful. They are Grammy-award-winning DJs who come from Australia, but they have made their home here when they are not touring the nightclubs of the world. Liv’s ex-partner is a very wealthy and prominent New Zealand businessman. They were in love and living their best lives, and they decided to start a family. He flew around the world to ensure that they were together when she was most fertile. They wanted a baby and were not leaving it to chance.

Six months into what Liv believed was a planned pregnancy with the man she wanted to build a family with, she discovered that her partner, Matthew Pringle, had multiple parallel lives. Their fairytale was a sham. As well as being in a relationship with Liv, Pringle was involved in a relationship with another woman, with whom he already had a child. The other woman was also pregnant. There was another woman with whom Pringle was in a serious relationship. In fact, there were multiple women and children in deliberately created overlapping family structures, each woman without knowledge of the others.

Pringle admitted that he had deceived Liv because he knew that she would leave if he told her the truth and he wanted a baby with her. He said that he would have considered telling her about the other women and children only after their child was born. Liv had no opportunity to give informed consent to the pregnancy, because she was lied to and deceived for years. His confession to her that he knew that she would leave is significant. It demonstrates that he understood that knowing the truth would have affected Liv’s decision to have a baby with him. That is reproductive coercion. It is about control over a woman’s body, her choices and her future.

Pringle refused to confirm with Liv any details about his life when she confronted him. He has instead used the court and legal system to silence, intimidate and isolate her and their child. He used non-disclosure agreements, legal threats and the family court to keep Liv’s silence about him being the father of their child. She could not have any contact with his family without prior consent and she was forbidden to make any public reference to him.

The restrictions were tied to a financial payment that could be withdrawn, and that she would have to repay, if she breached the terms. Every action that Pringle took was a power play. He continually demonstrated that their child’s welfare was of little importance to him. He did not even meet their daughter until she was four. He played games with the legal system without repercussions. His control over Liv’s life via the courts went on and on.

During legal proceedings, Liv raised the ongoing pattern of Pringle’s manipulative, controlling behaviour, but she always felt that the courts treated her as the problem. His patterns of behaviour included concealing other children, or siblings, from the court and its professionals; promising involvement, but failing to attend more than half of court-ordered contact; refusing to sign passport paperwork, obstructing their child’s identity; failing to contribute to education costs despite claiming that he would; refusing to complete court-directed life-story work for his child; linking backdated child support to an estrangement contract and conditions of confidentiality for him; and finally withdrawing from proceedings at the eleventh hour, leaving Liv with overwhelming legal costs. His behaviour was all about having control over Liv’s life. It was always about power—it was never about parenthood.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is telling an incredibly powerful story about reproductive coercion and, in particular, the role of family courts. Does she agree that this issue, this case and all the matters that it brings to light would be perfect for the review of family courts that Baroness Levitt has just announced? Baroness Levitt has stated that she feels women have been victimised by the ways family courts operate, so does my hon. Friend agree that this is exactly the sort of issue that the review ought to be looking at?

[Natalie Fleet]

Absolutely; I think that this is something that we need to shine a light on however we can. Far too many women are traumatised by family courts in this way—the situation is absolutely ripe for intervention.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing forward this issue. She has strength of character, strength of personality and commitment to these subjects; it is always a pleasure to come along and hear her express her viewpoint, and I congratulate her. Just to be helpful to her—I did speak to her beforehand—she may only now be aware that in Northern Ireland, conviction on indictment for domestic abuse and coercive control can lead to up to 14 years’ imprisonment, while in England and Wales the same offence receives just five years’ imprisonment. Does she agree that coercive control demands its own legislation—equally applied, with equal severity— across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Natalie Fleet]

I absolutely agree; the hon. Member makes very good points that I did not know about. The more we can talk about this issue, the better, and making it a stand-alone offence is absolutely the right thing to do.

It is easy to dismiss Liv’s as a story of extreme wealth, power and faraway places, but the reason I raised it, and the reason it is so important, is that so many women will see this story as theirs. If we do an internet search about reproductive coercion, the stories are there. Liv has shared her story on social media, and women have commented underneath saying, “This happened to me.” Women are having their bodies controlled by men: some forced to get pregnant, others forced to have an abortion. Both are examples of reproductive coercion—deliberate attempts to dictate a woman’s reproductive choices or interfere with her reproductive autonomy.

A recent poll of 1,000 women showed that 50%—half of them—had experienced some sort of reproductive coercion. It is happening to women we know, every day. A third of those women had felt pressured to have sex without contraception, 10% had had their contraception sabotaged and 15% had been forced to terminate a pregnancy that they wanted to keep.

The principle of reproductive coercion is recognised in law. If someone knowingly passes on a sexually transmitted disease, it is assault. If a condom is removed without consent—known as stealthing—it is rape. However, that principle has not been applied in the Nervo case, and that case is not an isolated one. Reproductive coercion is always about patterns of controlling behaviour, not just one act, which is why there is inconsistency in the application of the law. If our courts are presented with clear evidence of coercive behaviour that has resulted in pregnancy, yet decline to recognise or name it, we are left with a gap not just in terminology, but in protection.

Reproductive coercion is covered by both the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the Serious Crime Act 2015. Statutory guidance for the Domestic Abuse Act states that abuse within a family set-up can include

“reproductive coercion (and as part of this, forced abortion).”

According to the statutory guidance, reproductive coercion can involve

“restricting a partner’s access to birth control…refusing to use a birth control method…deception regarding the use of birth control including falsely claiming to be using contraception…forcing a partner to get an abortion, IVF or other related procedure; or denying access to such procedures.”

The Serious Crime Act details similar guidance and gives the same examples. The maximum penalty for the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship, including reproductive coercion, is five years in prison. In the year ending March 2025, nearly 50,000 cases of coercive control were recorded by police in England and Wales, yet reproductive coercion remains unprosecuted—not because it is not happening, but because the Crown Prosecution Service does not record that it is. The term reproductive coercion now exists in guidance and policy, but it has no clear home in law.

What are we asking for? First, we want an acknowledgment that cases like Liv’s occur and need exposing in the public interest. As lawyers have said:

“Legal reform in the area of sexual deception is not straightforward, either legally or in social terms. Indeed, the law is unlikely to move forward in a meaningful way until the wider public debate on such issues is also able to progress and mature.”

That is not enough. We need the offence to be seen in the eyes of the law. While I have spoken about reproductive coercion being mentioned in the statutory guidance for two of our laws, in the CPS’s policy, in safeguarding manuals and in a few judgments, we want to see it given a place on the statute book. There needs to be a clear route for investigating it as a crime, charging offenders and protecting victims.

The question before us is not whether reproductive coercion exists—we know that it does—but whether our systems are prepared to recognise it where there is evidence. When a condom is removed without consent, it is recognised as rape; when a disease is knowingly transmitted, it is assault; but when a woman is deliberately impregnated through deception and control, the abuse is not clearly named, prosecuted or safeguarded against.

Liv has described reproductive coercion as our wombs being hijacked, our futures being derailed with our children ultimately the victims, and our nervous system and trust in the world shot. There are cases like Liv’s where the evidence is present, and yet it is still not being named. That must change. My ask of the Government is for clearer recognition of reproductive coercion in the law. We need greater awareness and training to ensure that coercive behaviours—particularly those involving deception and reproductive autonomy—are properly understood. We need to ensure that patterns of behaviour are examined, not dismissed, and that individuals who raise legitimate concerns are not penalised for doing so. No woman should hear the words, “I was going to tell you after you had the baby,” and have that dismissed as something that does not require recognition. Without recognition, coercion cannot be addressed.

No change has ever happened via the state alone. As important as my previous asks were, my final ask is to women—women in the Public Gallery and women out there listening to this debate. If there is any element of what has been said today that is happening to you, reach out. You are not alone. You are surrounded by women going through exactly the same, not calling it out, feeling fear and shame, and feeling like they cannot speak. We regain control by speaking out and reaching out. That is how Liv and I connected in the first place.

Liv and Mim got in touch after hearing me on “Woman’s Hour”. I remember that interview vividly. I thought I was going to faint beforehand. I hugged the show runner, and that gave me the strength to carry on. The presenter was so lovely, and I spoke up despite being full of fear and shame. That shame never belonged to me, but I needed to undo a lifetime of society telling me that it did. When I spoke up, women heard me—women I had never met or crossed paths with. I met them and found out that one of them had been traumatised in ways that I had never even thought of. They are now speaking out too, and that has power.

Every time somebody speaks out about abuse—abuse that happens regularly, and abuse that happens equally as much but we have never heard of, as it is better hidden—we are heard by somebody who can support us or by women we have never even met who have been through the same or other forms of abuse that also need shouting about. For too long, we as women have been condemned to silence, and silence is where abuse thrives. If we instead use our voices, speak out and say, “This is not okay,” allow others to believe us and support us, and encourage survivors to come together—because nothing achieves change like an army of angry women—we can come together and force that much-needed change.

16:29

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) for bringing forward this really important debate. To echo the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), she always uses her voice in this place to amplify the voices of those who have been silenced. I am truly in awe of her; I find her an inspiration.

This is an important debate. It matters because controlling or coercive behaviour is one of the most harmful, least visible and most misunderstood forms of domestic abuse. It causes deep and lasting harm, yet is so often difficult to recognise, disclose and even evidence, both for victims and the professionals who are meant to support them. Before turning to the substance, I acknowledge the lived experience that has helped bring the issue into sharper focus. I understand that the survivors and campaigners Olivia and Mim Nervo have worked with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover and other parliamentarians in the Chamber to raise awareness of reproductive coercion and post-separation abuse. I am so grateful that lived experiences have helped prompt this debate.

I also put on record my personal thanks to Olivia and Mim for meeting me today. Olivia’s story is so moving. What she has been through is horrific beyond measure, and I sincerely thank her for speaking out, because undoubtedly she will have helped many other women who are sadly in the same position. It takes courage to speak out in that way and campaign for change. However, I must be clear about one boundary: I cannot comment on individual cases, court decisions, or any ongoing investigations. That is not for lack of concern—quite the opposite—but about respecting the independence and integrity of our justice system. I can, however, speak directly to the system issues that the debate raises.

As we have heard, reproductive coercion is a form of controlling or coercive behaviour. It involves using power and control to interfere with a person’s reproductive autonomy—something that should belong to the individual alone. The statutory guidance on controlling or coercive behaviour already recognises reproductive coercion, and includes behaviour such as restricting access to contraception, refusing to use contraception, forcing pregnancy, deception about contraception, or forcing or denying access to abortion, IVF or any other reproductive procedure.

Reproductive choice is a basic human right. We understand the long-term emotional, psychological and sometimes physical harm that this abuse, or the denial of this right, can cause. We also recognise how difficult it can be for victims to identify and disclose this type of abuse, particularly when it occurs within an intimate relationship or alongside any other form of control. This is not about isolated incidents. Reproductive coercion is often part of a wider pattern of coercive control, which could also include emotional, economic, sexual or physical abuse.

To understand reproductive coercion, we must first understand how coercive control-type abuse operates. It is about domination, fear, and the gradual erosion of someone’s autonomy. It includes isolating someone from friends and family, depriving them of basic needs, and enforcing degrading rules monitoring movements, controlling finances or taking control over everyday decisions. Sadly, that is not an exhaustive list, because abuse adapts to the victim’s circumstances. Victims may not recognise what is happening to them as abuse until the pattern becomes clear, sometimes years later. That complexity places a responsibility on us all to ensure that our systems are equipped to recognise patterns, not just incidents.

Controlling or coercive behaviour has been a criminal offence since 2015, under the Serious Crime Act 2015. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 strengthened the framework by explicitly recognising controlling or coercive behaviour as domestic abuse, and by extending the offence to ex-partners and family members who do not live together.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for her positive response to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet). The Minister obviously understands the issue very clearly. In my earlier intervention, I gave the example of Northern Ireland, where the sentence for coercive behaviour is 14 years. Over here on the mainland, in England and Wales, the sentence is only five years. Would the Minister and the Government consider strengthening the sentence to make it similar to that in Northern Ireland, ensuring that the time fits the crime?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the distinction in the sentencing for this crime in Northern Ireland. In England and Wales, the sentence is a maximum of five years, but as I have said, the crime normally comes alongside other forms of abuse, for which the CPS will look to charge and seek the highest sentence. Sentencing is an independent judicial matter—it is for the judge to determine—but as I have said, coercive behaviour is part of a pattern, and we need to get the framework right for agencies so that they can support victims and survivors.

The changes that were made were vital. They recognise the reality of post-separation abuse, and abuse by family members outside the household. They offer protection to victims who continue to experience coercive control long after a relationship has ended. Although I cannot comment on any individual case, it is right to reflect on the system-level issues that have been raised by campaigners here today. The concerns shared with the Department by many survivors include the impact of prolonged family court proceedings, post-separation abuse continuing through legal processes, and the distress caused by long delays and uncertainty in criminal investigations into coercive control.

There are also serious questions about how mechanisms that are intended to support confidence in the justice system, such as transparency and privacy provisions, can in some circumstances be experienced as silencing or controlling. Those concerns underline a central point: our justice system must never become a tool through which victims are abused even further. It must be there to protect victims and not compound harm. To echo the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), I totally agree that this is something that Baroness Levitt, the Minister in the other place, will look at in relation to family court reform.

This debate sits squarely within the Government’s wider mission to tackle violence against women and girls. The scale of violence against women and girls in this country is intolerable. The Government are treating it as a national emergency, with a clear ambition to halve the levels within a decade. Our “Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy”, published in December, sets out how we will prevent abuse, pursue perpetrators and support victims. Addressing controlling or coercive behaviour, including reproductive coercion, is central to delivering that ambition.

Since controlling or coercive behaviour became a criminal offence in 2015, the police and the CPS have been working hard to improve how they recognise and respond to it. Those trends are improving year on year: last year, police recorded more than 54,000 offences and CPS prosecutions have gone up by 38% compared with the previous year, to more than 1,500 defendants prosecuted. However, we recognise that more needs to be done about understanding controlling or coercive behaviour, which has evolved significantly since the statutory guidance was last published in 2023. That is why the Government have committed to updating the guidance on controlling or coercive behaviour by the end of this year.

The updated guidance will reflect the latest policy and practice, including clearer recognition of reproductive coercion. This is about supporting frontline professionals—police, prosecutors, health professionals and others—to identify abuse early, gather evidence more effectively and support victims through the criminal justice process.

More than anything, education must be central to prevention. Through relationships, sex and health education, we will help children and young people understand healthy relationships, consent and controlling behaviour from an early age. We are backing that with practical support for schools and parents. We are investing in teacher training, bringing in external expertise when needed and tackling harmful behaviours, such as teenage relationship abuse.

In health settings, women are rightly routinely asked about domestic abuse in private, during antenatal care, for example. If abuse is disclosed, women should be offered support, help with safety planning and access to specialist services. Abortion providers are required to be trained to spot signs of coercion or abuse and respond appropriately. We are also strengthening how health professionals respond, through the violence against women and girls strategy, through improved safeguarding training, and with the steps to safety programme in general practice.

Supporting victims to recover and rebuild their lives from abuse is a core priority. More than £1 billion is being invested over the next three years to support victims of violence against women and girls, including domestic abuse survivors. That includes funding for safe accommodation, advocacy, counselling and specialist services. In particular, my Department is increasing funding for victim support services year on year from 2026 to 2029, recognising the need to meet the rising cost pressures of delivery. In total, the Ministry of Justice will invest £550 million in victim support services over the next three years of the spending review period.

This debate highlights why controlling or coercive behaviour, and reproductive coercion in particular, must be taken seriously at every level. Reproductive coercion is coercive control and domestic abuse. Addressing it is essential if we are to deliver our ambition to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

I again acknowledge and place on record my sincere and incredible gratitude to the survivors and campaigners whose experience has brought urgency and clarity to this issue. We will continue to work across Government, and with all of you and with our partners, on this guidance and our practice to ensure that our system accurately reflects the reality of this abuse, so that we can deliver justice and safety for victims.

Question put and agreed to.

Women’s Safety in Rural Areas

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

16:39

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I secured this debate because I think the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has made an oversight; I hope it is a genuine oversight and that MHCLG is willing to rectify it. I am genuinely delighted that the Minister for Housing and Planning is here to respond, as I have been trying to contact him about this issue for some time, with no reply from his Department. I am confident that when he hears about the issues at first hand, he will be keen to act.

I want to start by paying tribute to my constituent Holly, who was the catalyst for this whole discussion. Holly lives in a village in my constituency and was flashed not once but three times by the same man while out walking in the countryside. When Holly came to see me, it was in a spirit of outrage that this had happened to her, and with a determination that we should do something about it.

UN Women UK has found that 71% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces. Most of them never report it—not because it did not happen but because they believe nothing will be done. That alone should give us pause.

When the House has debates about women’s safety and place, we often talk about the same issues—quite rightly—that women face when they are out and about. Do they take the longer, well-lit route? Do they run before dawn, or wait until it is light? Do they walk home, or pay for a taxi they cannot afford? Do they have a phone signal if something goes wrong?

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in celebrating the work that Sergeant Roseanna Green does to address the challenges presented when planning overlooks women’s safety? Her Walk and Talk intervention pilot in Somerset allows women who are over 18 to go on a walk with a female police officer to highlight local areas where they feel unsafe, including by identifying areas for CCTV, lighting improvement and increased police patrols.

[Anna Sabine]

That sounds like an excellent scheme. We have a similar one in Frome that I commend to the House.

In rural areas, most of the questions I just asked do not even apply. There may not be street lighting, there are no taxis and, as in swathes of my constituency, there is no mobile phone signal.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks about appropriate lighting. I am a keen cyclist, as are lots of women in rural areas, and 59% of women who cycle say they are really worried about their journeys and have huge safety concerns as a result. Last October, Langport cycling club took part in a glow ride to raise awareness of the need for enhanced levels of safety and visibility for women, particularly when they are cycling at night. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must update the design guidance to include stronger standards for appropriate lighting in rural areas, to improve women’s safety?

[Anna Sabine]

Certainly. That sounds excellent and I will come to lots of nerdy points about design guidance in due course.

My constituency of Frome and East Somerset is, by any measure, a beautiful part of England. It is also a place where the challenges I am describing are felt with particular intensity. Inspired by Holly, last autumn I launched a survey to hear directly from women in my constituency about how safe they feel. Their responses were sobering. Women wrote about being followed on dark country lanes that had no street lighting; about waiting for buses on isolated roads with no shelter, no CCTV and no way of summoning help; about giving up running and cycling all together, not because they lacked the inclination but because they simply did not feel safe doing so; and about the constant, exhausting vigilance required just to get home.

Coincidentally, earlier this year I was contacted separately by a brilliant urban designer called Natasha, who drew my attention to the fact that the Government have set out an excellent strategy to combat violence against women and girls, and a national planning policy framework, but at the moment the two things make no reference to each other, which is a shocking oversight.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. In rural constituencies such as mine and the hon. Lady’s, large stretches of unlit roads, pathways and open land, often bordered by dark fields, can create a real sense of vulnerability. Does the hon. Lady agree that future developments or planning proposals in such areas must take into account safe, well-lit corridors, especially when it comes to transport links, to ensure that women feel safe commuting to where they need to be in areas that are historically dark and isolated?

[Anna Sabine]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I will talk about lighting in due course.

In her book “Invisible Women”, Caroline Criado-Perez documents how the built environment has historically been designed around a default that is male, and how data on street use, transport planning and public space has been gathered without disaggregating by sex. The result is infrastructure that works reasonably well for men and imposes a hidden cost of time, money, anxiety and constrained freedom on women. That cost is not inevitable. It is a design choice, and it can be designed out.

Women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault than men, and more than twice as likely to experience stalking. Many such offences happen not in the home but in public spaces—on paths, at bus stops, in car parks and on the routes between places. They happen disproportionately in spaces that are poorly lit, poorly overlooked and poorly served by transport.

The consequences extend far beyond the incidents themselves. Girls’ loss of freedom in public space is directly and measurably linked to poor mental health. Women who feel unsafe curtail their physical activity, social lives and working patterns. Violence against women and girls costs hundreds of lives a year, alongside widespread and serious harm that ripples outwards into health services, the economy and the fabric of communities.

To circle back to my opening point, we know what works, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems determined not to implement it. On 16 December 2025, the Government published the revised national planning policy framework, and just two days later they published their violence against women and girls strategy, rightly declaring VAWG a national emergency and committing to a whole-of-society approach to prevention. Those two documents should have been in conversation with each other, but they were not.

The revised NPPF contains no reference whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety or violence against women in the built environment—not one. Chapter 8, on promoting healthy and safe communities, discusses safety, health and crime, but does so in entirely gender-blind terms, despite overwhelming evidence that safety is not experienced equally by all people in all spaces. A chapter about healthy and safe communities which does not acknowledge that safety is not experienced equally is not, with respect, a chapter about healthy and safe communities. It is a chapter about healthy and safe communities for some people.

In January I wrote to both the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Safeguarding to raise the issue directly. I have yet to receive a substantive response from either of them, but when The Guardian asked MHCLG for comment, the response received was frankly jaw-dropping. MHCLG said:

“The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny.”

The Department said it was

“unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined”.

That tells us that, alarmingly, the people responsible for designing our spaces and places apparently do not understand, despite huge bodies of evidence, why planning with women in mind might be relevant or useful. That raises serious concerns not just about the policy position but about the Department’s basic understanding of the relationship between planning and women’s lives.

What makes that omission particularly hard to defend is that it was not an accident. The previous Government explicitly raised this issue in the 2022 NPPF consultation, asking whether greater emphasis should be placed on making women and girls feel safe in public places. Responses were received, but nothing changed in the December 2025 revision, under the current Government. I want to be precise about that means: MHCLG was asked whether it should do better on this issue, received evidence it should and chose not to act. That is not an oversight; it is a decision.

International best practice in gender-responsive planning is really well established: clear sight lines and natural surveillance; active street frontages that keep eyes on the street; thoughtful lighting design—not simply more but better lights, placed in the right locations; and safe, well-connected public transport routes that do not leave women stranded after dark.

Make Space for Girls, the UK campaign that has done forensic and compelling work on how public space is designed for teenagers, has shown that the spaces we build for young people—the parks, play areas and recreational spaces—are overwhelmingly designed with boys in mind. The default is a multi-use games area: a hard, caged, male-dominated space that girls report, in study after study, feeling excluded from and unsafe in. Girls do not lack interest in outdoor space; they lack outdoor spaces that were designed with them in mind. The consequence is that girls retreat indoors earlier, exercise less and lose the freedom of movement that is so fundamental to adolescent development and mental health. This is not a minor amenity issue; it is a public health issue—and it starts with planning.

The principles are well established, but without explicit inclusion in national policy, they remain optional. As a result, women’s safety in public space is a postcode lottery—and nowhere is that lottery more consequential than in rural areas where the baseline is already so much lower.

The omission also creates a tension with the Government’s international commitments. UK infrastructure policy is explicitly aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals, including SDG 5.2, on eliminating violence against women and girls, and SDG 11.7, on safe and inclusive public spaces explicitly for women and girls. The NPPF discusses the safety and design quality of green space at length, but does not mention either of those commitments.

A further tension is emerging that I do not think has received sufficient attention—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) alluded to it. Nature recovery and biodiversity policies are rightly being pursued with increasing ambition, with green corridors, rewilded verges and, in some cases, reduced lighting to support wildlife. Those are good objectives, but in some instances they are pursued without adequate consideration of what they mean for women’s safety. A dark, overgrown footpath may be an excellent habitat, but it may also be a route that women no longer feel able to use. We should not have to choose between environmental policy and women’s safety. Without gender-responsive planning guidance, that tension will not be managed; it will simply produce worse outcomes by default. The NPPF is not a neutral document; it is a statement of priorities, and right now it does not include women’s safety among them.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech about how we build in this country and the considerations we need to make. In my constituency, we have a large-scale development called Minerva Heights that was planned to be built in phases. Lighting down St Paul’s Road, which connects phase 1 to other centralised communities, was meant to be delivered before phase 2 was built out, but phase 2 is not yet coming because phase 1 homes cannot be sold. I have been contacted by many constituents who feel trapped in their community and unable to engage in other areas because they have no way of moving around the building that has already been done. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is why we need an infrastructure-first approach that comes with lighting delivered before the homes are built?

[Anna Sabine]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need an infrastructure-first approach that also has women and girls’ safety in mind.

I hope with all sincerity that the MHCLG’s official view is not the one that was set out by whoever gave that comment to The Guardian. I hope the Labour Government aspire not just to match but to exceed the standards of the previous Government when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of women. I also hope the Minister will commit today to taking steps towards putting VAWG at the heart of the NPPF. That would have a genuinely transformative effect on women’s lives in the UK.

Along with a series of experts in urban design and planning, I am calling on the Government to commission an independent review—a serious, systematic review of violence against women and girls and the built environment. It must be a review with teeth that establishes an authoritative evidence base, that examines the structural gaps between the VAWG strategy and planning policy, and that produces recommendations that require developers and planners to treat women’s safety as a fundamental component of design, not an optional extra. I am sure the Minister will be pleased that all this is included in a second letter that I will send to him today.

Alongside that, I urge the Government to take the following specific steps without delay: to amend the NPPF to explicitly require the consideration of women and girls’ safety, particularly in chapters 8 and 12, so that local authorities have a clear national mandate to act; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include substantive guidance on designing for women’s safety, drawing on the international best practice that already exists and is well evidenced; to require major developments to demonstrate how they contribute to SDGs 5.2 and 11.7—commitments the Government have already made on the world stage; and to introduce gender impact assessments for large-scale developments as a standard part of the planning process.

I also urge the Government to look seriously at gender budgeting as a tool for local authorities when they design streets, parks and public spaces. Gender budgeting does not mean ringfencing money for women; it means asking at the point of allocation, “Who benefits from this spending? Is the distribution equitable?” Vienna, Helsinki and Seoul have all used gender budgeting in the design of public space to reveal and correct the systemic underfunding of spaces that women and girls actually use. It is a practical, evidence-based mechanism, and it is entirely compatible with the fiscal constraints that local authorities are operating under. We should be using it here.

Finally, I hope the Minister will ensure that MHCLG is formally integrated into cross-Government delivery of the VAWG strategy. A whole-of-society approach that excludes the Department responsible for shaping the physical environment is not, in any meaningful sense, a whole-of-society approach—it is a strategy with a very large hole in it. The Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade is genuinely welcome, but ambition without structural delivery mechanisms will not achieve it. Right now, the NPPF—the primary lever for shaping how this country is built—contains nothing that would materially help to deliver it. That gap must be addressed if the strategy is to be credible.

The women who responded to my survey in Frome and East Somerset were not asking for the extraordinary. They were not asking for anything that other countries have not already delivered. They were asking to walk home safely, to go for a run, to catch a bus without calculating the risk, and to move through their own communities with the same unconsidered freedom that most men take entirely for granted. This is not a radical demand; it is a basic one, and the tools to deliver it in planning policy, design guidance and cross-Government strategy are well within our grasp. I urge the Minister to act. The evidence is there, the need is clear, and the gap in policy is glaring and, as I have shown today, entirely without justification. Let us work together to close it.

16:55

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing this debate and making a powerful, well evidenced and entirely reasonable case for women and girls’ interests to be taken better into account in planning.

The violence against women and girls strategy, published in December 2025, describes planning and design as “critical tools” in women’s safety. Part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry, commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard, called for women’s safety to be embedded into the planning of public spaces, yet the updated national planning policy framework, published by the same Government in the same month, does not mention women or girls once—not in chapter 8 on safe communities, nor anywhere else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset and I wrote to the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Safeguarding Minister about that omission. When the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was asked, a spokesperson told The Guardian it was “unclear” why the two issues should be combined in any way. If the Government do not understand how women’s safety ties in with planning new spaces, we have a very serious problem.

The previous Conservative Government at least acknowledged that link when they consulted in 2022 on whether the NPPF should do more to keep women and girls safe. They did nothing about it, but they asked the question, which got it on the agenda. The Government appear to have one Department denying that a connection exists, while another Department explicitly acknowledges planning as a critical tool. That is unfortunately a case in point in the Government’s wider approach to communities and consultation. Rather than trusting local people to shape the places they live in, the direction of travel, whether by accident or by design—I look forward to the Minister telling me that this is not the direction of travel—seems to be towards centralisation and away from community voices.

There are several examples of that. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will see the Secretary of State removing decisions from local councillors on planning applications, in a move that I believe infantilises local councillors. A new direction, confirmed by the Ministry’s document published only yesterday, will prevent councillors from deciding on significant applications unless they first ask for the Minister’s permission. The Government have withdrawn funding for neighbourhood planning support services, the very mechanism through which communities can influence the design of their built environment.

The Government have also stripped much of the community and consultation policy out of the new draft national planning policy framework. The word “community” has been deleted no fewer than 35 times and the word “consultation” has been deleted 10 times. Without funding, most town and parish councils simply cannot review or update their plans. If gendered safety is not in the NPPF, overstretched local authorities cannot address it, because they are too underfunded to do anything that is not mandatory. These omissions from the NPPF do not only fail women at the national level; they give others licence to ignore the issue entirely.

In my constituency of Taunton and Wellington, parishioners in Kingston St Mary have raised with me the lack of pedestrian routes into Taunton. Walking along a narrow country road with no pavements is the only option, and women in the village find it unsafe. Cyclists too are affected. The parish council passed on one comment to me from a resident who said that cycling into Taunton should be easy, not life-threatening, on the Kingston Road. It is too dangerous to commute on a bike. The parish council also asked me particularly, unprompted by me, to raise the removal of funding for neighbourhood plans by this Government.

Walking along roads without footpaths is unsafe for everyone, but for women, especially after dark, it is not merely inconvenient; it restricts their freedom. Women in our communities deserve to enjoy the same confidence moving around our cities, towns and villages as anyone else. The local planning policy could and should be the mechanism to deliver that, consulting local communities to understand the priorities that need to be addressed. But communities need the policy backing and the tools and resources to make it happen, and the Government seem to be taking those away.

There are of course trade-offs that arise from design choices. Street lighting improves safety but contributes to light pollution. Green corridors are ecologically valuable but can create spaces that feel unsafe. Dense planting improves biodiversity but can reduce sight lines. Those are all trade-offs, but central Government overreach is not the answer. Local decision making informed by community nous is the answer. That would give women and others a say in the outcomes that matter in their local environments. Those are precisely what community-led planning is for.

Liberal Democrats call on the Government to amend the NPPF to explicitly require consideration for women’s and girls’ safety, particularly in chapter 8; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include clear guidance on designing for women’s safety; and to restore funding for neighbourhood plans so that communities have the means to implement the solutions that work best for them.

Community involvement matters, and planning has everything to do with women’s safety, whatever the quotes in The Guardian said. I hope the Minister will explain how community voices, particularly those of women, will be heard in planning.

17:00

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and to take part in this debate about the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas. Any concern about the safety of women and girls in their local communities is, of course, of real importance, and I welcome the opportunity to examine the issue from the context of the planning system. I congratulate the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing the debate. Let me start by setting out why this debate is important, because the safety of women and girls should be a whole Government effort and of concern to the whole of society. It is relevant to consider the context at the outset.

In July 2024, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing described the problem of violence against women and girls as a national emergency, making up just under 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales. Data has shown that in rural areas, convictions for domestic abuse are less likely, and victims in rural areas are subject to domestic abuse for 25% longer than those in urban areas, and are half as likely to report it.

It is clear that a strong disparity exists between the safety of women in urban locations and those in rural locations—I appreciate the value of this aspect of today’s debate. I have no doubt that the Government share the police chiefs’ concern. Despite that, the Government’s “Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy” mentions rural locations just once. I suspect that is unintentional, but would welcome confirmation from the Minister in a few moments.

When we think about safety, we often focus on laws, policing or personal responsibility. That is entirely understandable, but one of the most powerful tools we have is something perhaps less obvious and the subject of this debate: planning. The way we design and organise rural spaces, roads, transport systems, lighting, housing and community services can significantly shape how safe women and girls feel and actually are. It is important that women and girls feel safe in the built environment around them, and that choices are made to ensure that safety can be upheld. That is why it is noteworthy that the Government have said:

“Design and planning are critical tools in achieving this.”

The planning system may at first seem a somewhat unrelated aspect of Government policy in the context of women’s safety, but as the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset emphasised in her speech, that assumption is wide of the mark. Through the planning system, both central and local Government can shape the built environment around women and girls to provide the infrastructure necessary to make rural streets, hamlets, villages and towns safe places for local people in general, and local women and girls in particular. For example, we know that well-lit streets, accessible transport and thoughtful design can work towards reducing violence and opportunities for harm.

Those examples do not guarantee women’s and girls’ safety. It is of considerable regret that so many women and girls do not feel safe on our streets, despite efforts made locally and centrally by figures of authority. But the changes that such planning choices can lead to in making women and girls feel safer in rural communities are none the less of great importance. That is clearly why the Government have announced that they will

“update national design guidance to reflect a VAWG perspective, ensuring that safety considerations inform how public spaces are designed.”

I hope the Minister will update us in a few minutes’ time on the progress regarding that pledge. What specific changes will be made and when?

In addition, the Minister’s colleagues in the Department for Transport launched a consultation regarding the third cycling and walking investment strategy recently. In that consultation, the Minister’s colleagues noted:

“Investment in well-lit, safe, high-quality walking, wheeling and cycling routes increases feelings of personal safety, as well as improving road safety”.

The Government are yet to release their response to the consultation, which closed in November 2025. I hope the Minister will confirm that he will investigate how that pledge can be enacted, and what impact it will have on rural areas and the women and girls who live within them.

On rural issues specifically, I have already spoken about better lighting and creating safer spaces, but rural areas face a multitude of other issues that can actively work against the protection of women and girls. Technology and communication infrastructure are key parts of modern planning. Access to mobile networks and emergency services can literally be lifesaving in rural areas, but, according to a report from the House of Lords, although the situation is improving, rural areas often suffer from much worse access to the internet and worse phone coverage than urban areas.

In January 2024, the proportion of rural premises with access to gigabit-capable broadband was only 47%, compared with 84% of premises in urban areas. Around 5% of premises in rural areas were not able to access a decent broadband service at all, compared with just 1% in urban areas. Access to efficient broadband and speedy ways to contact key agencies in emergencies, including the police, would intuitively seem to be an important part of increasing the safety of women and girls in rural areas.

The lack of public transport in rural areas can force women and girls to take longer, less safe routes home. Given that, as I already mentioned, rural areas tend to be less well-lit and are often less heavily populated, the increased risk to women and girls caused by the lack of public transport is obvious.

In the planning system as a whole, there is a difficult balance between more effective regulation and making the system not just work for everyone, but actively support everyone in all aspects of life. It is clear that it will require a whole-Government approach to get that right. Planning alone is not a complete solution; it must work, as the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset said, alongside other agencies, such as education, community engagement and strong legal protections. Without good planning, even the best policies can fall short if they attempt to work in isolation.

The safety of women and girls must be improved and protected with a holistic and multi-departmental approach. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.

17:07

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing this debate, and I thank the other hon. Members who have participated this afternoon for their contributions. On the subject of the hon. Lady’s letter, prior to this debate my office did look into what has happened. I think that, because it was addressed to both me and a Minister in the Home Office, it has been lost. However, I can assure her that she will receive a detailed response in fairly short order.

I will begin by reaffirming that tackling violence against women and girls is a top priority for the Labour Government, and our mission to halve it within a decade is already under way. As hon. Members have referenced, in December we published “Freedom from violence and abuse”, which is a transformative cross-Government strategy to accomplish that mission.

The strategy sets out the Government’s vision and the proposed concrete actions to prevent violence and abuse, pursue perpetrators and support victims. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), said, it recognises that we must take a whole-of-society approach to tackling violence against women and girls. It recognises that we must work across Government, public services and wider society to achieve meaningful and lasting change.

An example of the cross-Government work that is taking place to build a safer society for women and girls is the ongoing work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on women’s safety in rural areas. Last year, it sought evidence from rural areas on support services and delivery methods that work best in rural contexts. DEFRA is working across Government to understand the findings of that evidence and to inform future work. That will address the disparities in the provision of support so that every victim, whether they are in a city or a rural village, can access the help that they need.

There are examples across other Government Departments. For example, the Home Office is working with the Department for Transport to ensure that considerations of violence against women and girls are embedded into planning and transport guidance so that public places are welcoming and secure for women. On the shadow Minister’s point, I am more than happy to ask DFT colleagues to provide an answer as to when we can expect a response to the consultation that he referenced.

Turning to matters for which I am responsible as the Minister for Housing and Planning, my Department is clear that women and girls must feel safe and be safe in all environments, including shared and open spaces such as streets, parks, transport hubs and public buildings. Planning and urban design are critical tools to that end for enhancing women’s safety. While the VAWG strategy should not be combined with the national planning policy framework, it is relevant to it and has informed the drafting of it. In chapter 12 of the framework, concerning well-designed places, the existing NPPF sets out that the planning system should

“create places that are safe, inclusive and accessible and which promote health and well-being, with a high standard of amenity for existing and future users…and where crime and disorder, and the fear of crime, do not undermine the quality of life or community cohesion and resilience.”

As hon. Members are aware, the Government recently consulted on a new NPPF. The proposals in it are intended to reinforce the message that developments should create places that are safe and inclusive, including for women and girls. I draw the attention of hon. Members to a number of specific policies in the draft framework that are relevant to design, transport and public safety. Our proposed policy on the key principles for well-designed places sets out that, in relation to public spaces, development proposals should:

“Include spaces that are safe, secure, inclusive, accessible for all ages and abilities and which facilitate and encourage social interaction, play and healthy lifestyles”.

Our proposed policy on street design, access and parking sets out that development proposals should:

“Make sure that the arrangement of streets and other routes help to create places that are safe, inclusive and attractive for all users”.

There is also a specific policy in the draft framework on maintaining public safety and security, which sets out:

“Development proposals should anticipate and address possible malicious threats and other hazards…in relation to…Occupiers and users, by identifying potential safety risks and proportionate mitigation opportunities which can be addressed through the design of the scheme. This applies especially in relation to…addressing crime, or the fear of crime”.

I have noted the calls from a range of individuals and organisations, including the hon. Members for Frome and East Somerset and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), to ensure that the framework more explicitly recognises the importance of a focus on the needs of women and girls and their safety when considering development proposals, whether that be in a rural or urban context; calls that the framework explicitly reference the VAWG strategy; and some of the other requests that have been made today. As hon. Members are aware, the consultation on a new NPPF closed on 10 March. My officials and I are considering all the feedback received, including in relation to this issue, and I will treat the arguments made today as an informal extension of that process. We will publish an updated NPPF in due course.

As hon. Members are hopefully aware, the NPPF is supported by a range of planning practice guidance. That is really important because the purpose of PPG is to support the implementation of national planning policy. The VAWG action plan contained within the strategy published in December included, as has been referenced, a specific commitment for the Government to update national design guidance to reflect a violence against women and girls perspective, ensuring that safety considerations inform how public spaces are designed.

In January 2026, we published updated design and placemaking PPG in draft. That consolidated document is intended to replace existing design guidance, including the national design guide and national model design code. Hon. Members will, I trust, welcome that the draft guidance that went out to consultation not only demonstrates the Government’s commitment to well-designed places but includes specific references to considering the safety of women and girls in the design of public spaces and streets. For example, paragraph 150 makes it clear that:

“Security features should be designed to support the safety of women and girls.”

The consultation on the draft guidance has now closed. Again, my officials and I are analysing the responses received and will publish the final version in due course. When the final PPG is published, policy DP3 in the draft NPPF proposes that the principles of that PPG should apply and inform applications in the absence of local policies, guides, codes or master plans. Those local tools can do the job if a local area has put the guides in place, or applied a specific master plan to a specific development, but in the absence of those we are proposing that the national PPG would apply through proposed policy DP3 in the draft NPPF.

I thank again the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset for giving the House a chance to debate these important matters. I assure her and other hon. Members that I will reflect on the points raised in the debate in advance of setting out the Government’s final position on the NPPF and design and placemaking PPG.

17:12

[Anna Sabine]

I thank the Minister for his constructive response. It always seems to me that the Government are blessed with many feisty and brilliant female politicians trying to make sure that VAWG is rightly pushed up the political agenda. Given that we live in an environment that historically has been largely designed by and for men, I feel quite strongly that if we can manage to get a mention of the safety and wellbeing of women and girls into the NPPF it will genuinely make a difference to the way in which local authorities and other bodies treat planning, and consider it as a group.

There is often a joke that it feels as if a little more attention is paid to bats’ wellbeing than to women and girls’ wellbeing. I would love for that to change. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate, and I thank the Minister for his comments.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas.

17:15

Sitting adjourned.