International Women’s Day

Baroness Cumberlege Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, in this debate. Harassment at work is a real issue and I hope the Government might consider the three steps that he mentioned. For me, International Women’s Day has taken on a greater significance than ever, and its theme, “Choose to challenge”, resonates very strongly with me.

I was the chair of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review and we spent two and a half years just listening and learning from many hundreds of people who have suffered avoidable harm resulting from medications and one medical device. Those people were overwhelmingly women, and my team and I discovered that, while every story we heard was different and deeply personal, there were some common themes linking them all together. These themes were really disturbing—actually, they were shocking. Women told us that they were not informed about the risks. Without being informed of the risks, they could not actually make informed decisions. That, in turn, meant that they could not give their informed consent and, when problems and painful complications arose, we heard that women were routinely ignored or dismissed.

There are many thousands of these women and they have been feeling powerless, helpless and deeply hurt. Many are in great physical pain and tremendous mental anguish. Too often, they have been treated in a cavalier fashion by a healthcare system that is disjointed and seems to have lost its raison d’être. This is not just a UK phenomenon; it is international. I have been contacted by women as far away as Australia and New Zealand who have been going through the same nightmare. Listening to women is not merely something that is nice to do, it is the starting point for good policy and good care.

Five years ago, I chaired the national maternity review. Our starting point was to listen to women and their families, and our report, Better Births, reflected what we were told. We have been putting these recommendations into being, but listening is only one step in the right direction. The second vital step is to act and, in our report, First Do No Harm, my review team said, “We urgently need an independent patient safety commissioner, someone whose role it is to listen to patients’ views and concerns, and who says, ‘Stop, this does not look right. We need to look into this. We need a pause.’”

We need someone who listens, but also someone who makes things happen. The Government have accepted the need for the commissioner and have legislated to establish the role. That is absolutely great, and I thank Ministers and officials for helping to make this happen. We now need to put this person in place. The need is urgent, because we know that avoidable harm still happens. So, in the spirit of International Women’s Day, I choose to challenge. I choose to challenge the Government: you have made a good decision by legislating to create a patient safety commissioner; for the sake of those who have suffered enough already, and for those who may be at risk right now, let us move at speed. Let us put the commissioner in place. Let us listen to patients, to women. Let us learn. Let us act. Let us improve safety and let us improve the quality of their care. What better commitment, and what better way to mark International Women’s Day?