Women’s Health Outcomes

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as the first male Member of your Lordships’ House to speak in the debate, I welcome very much what the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, had to say. Her opening speech was, frankly, awesome—that is how I would describe it.

I do not apologise for returning to the Marmot review, which the Minister has heard me speak about before. Inequalities in life expectancy have increased since 2010, especially for women. Female life expectancy declined in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods between 2010-12 and 2016-18. Female life expectancy decreased in every region save for London, the West Midlands and the north-west. Life expectancy in England has stalled since 2010, which has not happened since 1900. When health has stopped improving, it is a sign that society has stopped improving. That is all from the Marmot Review 10 Years On, published in February 2020.

Of course, health is linked to all the other conditions in which people are born, grow, live and work, together with inequalities in power, money and resources. Frankly, the Government have not prioritised health inequalities, despite the concerning trends, and there has been no national health inequality strategy since 2010. This is a national UK issue and cannot be shoved off as a devolved matter.

I have not mentioned Northern Ireland. It has suffered the same as the other three nations but one figure, set out on page 12 of Build Back Fairer: The COVID-19 Marmot Review, is unique in respect of female health. The table is titled: “Relative cumulative age-standardised all cause mortality rates by sex, selected European countries, week ending 3 January to week ending 12 June 2020”. Of the eight countries where the situation got worse—as opposed to the 11 where it got better—the UK’s four nations were in the eight, and in only one of all the countries where it got worse, it got worse for females compared to males. That was Northern Ireland. There is quite clearly something badly wrong in health inequalities between men and women in Northern Ireland for it to stick out like that among all those countries. The recommendations for change are all well known. They are listed in both the Marmot reports I have used.

I note the BMA has highlighted more targeted issues, such as those relating to domestic abuse, pregnancy and maternity services, which male Secretaries of State keep ignoring. However, the first move has to be an acceptance that things have gone really badly since 2010, when the coalition Government imposed swingeing cuts to public expenditure without any analysis of the consequences. One consequence is the stalling of life expectancy, where women have been affected worse than men.