Menopause

Feryal Clark Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Robertson. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing the debate. She has gone above and beyond in pursuit of this cause, empowering women across the country to stand up against a system that is simply not working for them. She inspires me and so many others in this place, and I am proud to call her a colleague and a friend.

I thank all Members for their passionate and important contributions, especially those who have shared their experience and the experiences of their constituents. I praise the work of campaign groups such as Menopause Support and Menopause Mandate, which do great advocacy work and provide women with the information and support they need in what are often incredibly difficult situations.

As we have heard from hon. and right hon. Members throughout this debate, too many menopausal women are suffering unnecessarily in silence. This remains a national health scandal. Too many women are still being dismissed and told that menopause is a natural part of life—that they just need to put up with it. That is simply not good enough. Women should not be made to put up with it. I am pleased to say that, seeing the recent campaigns and hearing Members speak today, I am confident that it will not continue for too long.

Change needs to start with ensuring that healthcare professionals are properly informed and have the confidence to give women the advice and treatment that work for them. We know that, at present, that is simply not the case. As we have heard today, women are still being fobbed off and given the wrong treatment. In 2021, Menopause Support revealed that 41% of UK medical schools did not have mandatory menopause education on their curriculum. Healthcare professionals are not adequately trained to give women the right solution and treatment or even to identify menopause in the first place.

When it comes to treatment, hormone replacement therapy is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence as a first-line and proven treatment for menopause symptoms, but that is only if patients can get it. We have heard today about the recent shortage of HRT. It is reported that the Health Secretary knew of the shortage as early as October 2021, and yet he did nothing. It took until May—seven months on—for the Government to allow pharmacists to make swaps to women’s HRT prescriptions to deliver the care they need. It took a mass public outcry for the Government to listen to the needs and voices of women. A failure to plan left women unable to access the treatment they so desperately need.

The situation is even worse for black and ethnic minority women, as set out so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), and I thank her for sharing her personal experience. It is even harder for black, Asian and minority ethnic women to get diagnoses or to be heard. A report by the Fawcett Society showed that 45% of BAME women required multiple appointments for their GPs to realise they were experiencing menopause or perimenopause. I hope the Minister heard my hon. Friend’s helpful suggestions, and that she will do more to ensure that black and Asian women’s voices and experiences of the menopause are heard and that the campaigns my hon. Friend mentioned are recognised.

Menopause is yet another example of women’s health being ignored. In the Government’s own survey on women’s healthcare, 84% of respondents said there had been instances where they had not been listened to by healthcare professionals. In recent years, we have seen a string of healthcare scandals primarily affecting women. The Minister needs to wake up to the fact that women are still not listened to when it comes to health. Let me just some of those scandals: nearly 2,000 reported cases of avoidable harm ands death in maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford; more than 1,000 women operated on unnecessarily by a rogue breast surgeon, Ian Paterson; and thousands in the UK given faulty PIP breast implants. There is a really long list of health scandals, which indicate that women are still not heard in the health system.

On access to HRT, the Government have delayed changes to prescription charges, leaving some women paying £200 more this year for HRT, making it inaccessible to many women in the middle of a cost of living crisis that is particularly felt by women in BAME and deprived communities, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. In some communities, HRT is considered a luxury. That is a scandal in the fifth richest country in the world. How can we be in this place? It is disgraceful that women are being priced out of getting treatments that they need while trying to make ends meet.

The recent shortage of HRT, unfortunately, merely adds to the ever growing list. The Government have failed to take meaningful action to improve women’s health. They are a Government of tsars, taskforces and reviews but no action. There is a huge list of reviews that have been commissioned by the Government, the recommendations of which they have refused to fully implement. The menopause taskforce, which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea mentioned, will run for 18 months and there will only be nine meetings. How will that create meaningful change for women?

I have a lot of respect for the Minister, and I believe she is one of the hardest working Ministers in the Health Department, but she works very hard to act as a gatekeeper for the Treasury. How do we make sure that this taskforce is not yet another example of the Government covering their own back, with no action? The Government had promised their comprehensive women’s health strategy by the end of last year, but it has still not appeared. Waiting lists across the NHS are at a record high, and when it comes to health issues affecting women, the waiting lists for essential appointments are even longer. The Government must start taking women’s health seriously.

We have heard great suggestions about raising awareness of the menopause, including from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). Making it easier for women to access HRT and improving the education and training of health professionals is essential. That is the only way we will get women across the country the right diagnosis and right treatment at the right time. However, it is clear, sadly, that health continues to be an afterthought for this Government, and the voices of women have been, at best, ignored and, at worst, silenced.

Will the Minister commit to finally publishing the women’s health strategy and listening to women by delivering the healthcare they need, when and where they need it? Furthermore, when will she finally deliver the Government’s commitment to enable women to pay a single annual prescription for HRT? As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea said: no more warm words—women need the Minister to act. If history tells us anything, it is that women will not sit back in the face of injustice. From what I have heard today, we can be sure that those voices will not go away—they will get louder and louder. I hope the Government wake up and start to act.