Sanitary Products

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on women’s health.

I am grateful to have secured the final debate before the recess to raise the issue of period poverty. I have touched on this matter before in this House in the context of homelessness. I wish to expand on that, and also to talk about the shocking recent reports of period poverty among school-age girls in west Yorkshire. The phenomenon of period poverty has gone under the radar for some time and is only now starting to be discussed after the successes of the campaign against the tampon tax. It is a unique challenge faced by women in poverty, who all too often face a choice between buying sanitary products or food. In the worst-case scenario, homeless women have been faced with a choice between stealing sanitary products and doing without.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that women using sanitary products beyond their recommended duration are at risk of toxic shock syndrome, and that homeless women, in particular, self-ration these products at great risk to their health?

[Paula Sherriff]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I will be coming to the issue of toxic shock syndrome and other associated health conditions, but she makes that crucial point very well.

The horror of these choices cannot be overstated, and they are choices that women in one of the most advanced industrial nations on earth should not face. Period poverty represents nothing less than the affected women being robbed of their human dignity. As an illustration of this, the Salvation Army has relayed to me the experiences at its Darlington Citadel food bank, where women have turned up literally begging for sanitary products. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will quote its commanding officer in full, because I believe that the House really needs to hear this:

“Since we have started supplying”

sanitary products,

“with tears in their eyes many women have told us what they do when they can’t afford them. They use rolled up socks, they rip up clothing, they even use newspaper, they stuff these into their underwear as makeshift sanitary wear—or they simply have to free bleed. These women however, struggle to pay for electricity and so doing laundry to a sufficient level to kill any bacteria is a problem and they are putting themselves and their daughters at risk of infection resulting in possible medical treatment with antibiotics or even hospitalization. Some women have informed us that they have needed dilation and curettage treatment and courses of antibiotics for infections, costing the NHS money and resources.”

Unfortunately, this testimony does not stand alone. An investigation by Amanda Ternblad of Goldsmiths University into period poverty in London has found that some women resort to using toilet roll, which can pose a risk of thrush infection, or using sanitary products for longer than they should be used—that follows on from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins)—which can lead to fatal toxic shock syndrome and the risk of further long-standing health problems. Of course, that costs the NHS in the long run, but that should be as nothing compared with the desperation, indignity, humiliation and degradation visited on those women, who are already among the most vulnerable in our society. That should beggar belief in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet.

The problem is most pronounced for women who are homeless, who typically have no stable source of income with which to buy sanitary products. In the debate on homelessness on 14 December 2016, I mentioned that homeless shelters get an allowance from the Government to provide items such as condoms and razors, but they have no such allowance to buy sanitary products, leaving them reliant on charity donations instead.

When I last raised that point in the House, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), said that the Government provide funding for outreach services for homeless people, meaning that such facilities would ultimately be funded anyway. Unfortunately, the point is that there appears to be a shortfall in toiletries such as sanitary protection for women. In many places in the UK, condoms are given away for free, and there is a clear and well-understood public argument for that. Why, then, is that not commonplace for sanitary products, which every woman requires, and the absence of which can have grave health consequences? Although valuable work has been done in the past couple of years by organisations such as St Mungo’s to ensure that homelessness services are gender-appropriate, the Government’s allowance for such products does not appear to have kept pace and speaks to something of a male-dominated view of homelessness.

In reality, women who are homeless face numerous unique challenges, from their personal safety, to vulnerability and falling into prostitution. Those challenges, while grave, have in various ways been targeted before by the good works of homelessness charities. Period poverty, however, is one of the unique challenges for women that has been under-represented, which makes it all the more important that it is now taken seriously.

The reliance on charity is a problem in itself. Donations of sanitary products to food banks and homeless shelters are often not enough to keep up with demand, while supply is variable across the country, meaning that the donations are not always made in the areas with most demand. The Homeless Period campaign is an attempt to gain more attention for the problem and to secure more donations of sanitary items to homeless shelters and food banks so that their stocks are more readily available. I again wish to pay tribute to the incredible work of Laura Coryton, who campaigned so effectively with me on the issue of the tampon tax, for her work in bringing the issue to wider public attention.

As part of my support for the campaign, I have secured a trial of a donation point for toiletries at a Boots store in Dewsbury to go to the Fusion Housing charity, which supports food banks in the Kirklees area. It is a small step, but I hope that many more like it can be achieved in the near future and that they will make a difference.

If, as we sadly now find, the Government are content to let charity supplant welfare in providing for the needy in our society, I will call on other companies to follow the example of Boots. Every area will have similar problems, and similar charities will try to cope with them. Many companies that deal with toiletries could set up similar schemes as part of their wider corporate responsibility to their communities. I was encouraged by an example on a recent trip to Brussels, where a hotel chain was donating surplus toiletries to its local facility for the homeless. With a bit of ingenuity, companies can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the most vulnerable—as could this Government.

It is not, however, just homeless women who are vulnerable to period poverty. I was absolutely appalled—actually, I was heartbroken—by the recent BBC Radio Leeds report that a west Yorkshire charity called Freedom4Girls, which usually sends sanitary products to girls in Kenya, had been contacted by a school in Leeds to provide sanitary products to girls there. Concerns were raised after girls were found to be playing truant because they could not afford sanitary protection. I ask everyone to take a moment to consider what is happening in one of the richest nations in the world.

As with the homeless women in the examples I mentioned earlier, the same makeshift and risky remedies had been tried. We heard about 15-year-old girls sellotaping toilet roll to their knickers because they could not afford tampons or sanitary towels. Girls would rather not attend school than go through the indignity of doing so in a vulnerable state. There are related reports of teachers having to pay for sanitary products for their pupils. That, too, beggars belief. Schools are the perfect place for the Government to enact early intervention on matters relating to women’s health, as has been borne out by the valuable human papilloma virus vaccination programme. I urge the Government to investigate how the problem of period poverty can be tackled in schools, for example by including menstrual health in sex and relationships education and by looking at the possibility of using eligibility for free school meals for the provision of sanitary products to vulnerable young girls.