International Women’s Day

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the inspirational speakers we have heard so far. International Women’s Day feels particularly poignant to me this year, and there are two reasons for that. The first is watching the women in Iran. The reason why this has particularly affected me is because of the six-year fight to bring back my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, which many Members, including you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will remember. During that time, I encountered the brutality of the Iranian regime whenever we tried to negotiate her return to our country. The way that they treated her was like she was nothing, in all honesty—they attached a worthlessness to her identity.

Now we are watching women fighting just for education and the right to dress the way they want—just for the right to live. Bombing primary schools full of little girls is something that is really hard to fathom. Every morning, no matter what happens, we can wake up feeling very lucky because we know that we can walk to work or get on the tube and we will be safe. Our thoughts today are with the people in Iran who are fighting for justice, especially the women.

The second reason that International Women’s Day feels particularly poignant to me is because of the case I am dealing with of Bright Horizons nursery in my constituency, which some Members will have heard me speak about. Vincent Chan operated for seven years undetected, preying on little girls, toddlers and babies, inflicting pain on them and conducting sexual abuse— something that he had already done in previous workplace. He went undetected and was given a job in a place where parents entrusted staff to look after their children while they were at work.

Parents only found out about the abuse because he had been reported by a brave whistleblower for acts of cruelty towards children—for bullying, not for sexual abuse. It was only when police decided to seize his devices, including nursery iPads, that he was discovered. He had filmed himself committing acts of sexual violence against little girls in the nursery itself, and he had used the iPads to airdrop the images to his own devices. This makes us realise that the fight is not over and that there is so much more work we have to do to combat violence against women and girls. I am pleased to be here today, surrounded by women who have been fighting that fight, and I hope that people like Vincent Chan get justice and end up behind bars.

I want to pay tribute to all the mothers of the children who were affected in the nursery. They have made sure that this will never happen again. They are the ones who are fighting for mandatory CCTV. They are the ones who are fighting to make sure that there is a “two person per child” rule in every room in every nursery. They are the ones who are now fighting for a flare system so that whistleblowing can be done properly and without fear and nurseries are not able to mark their own homework.

However, every time I speak about this case, I make sure that I say that for all the cases of sexual abuse in nurseries and early years settings that have happened, there are hundreds of thousands of other babysitters and nursery staff who look after children day in, day out and make sure that they are loved and protected. We must not tar everyone with the same brush, but we do need to take this seriously, and something does need to be done.

Today I want to talk mainly about my brave constituent Sanju Pal, who is in the Gallery. The focus of the UN for this International Women’s Day is, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) said, rights, justice and action. Across the world, women and girls have just 64% of the rights that men have. That is why I want to concentrate on Sanju’s case. Some Members will have heard me mention Sanju before. After six years of fighting a legal battle against her former employer—a management consultancy firm— for unfair dismissal, she won a landmark case at the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London. Her case sets a legal precedent for endometriosis to be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope you will indulge me while I talk about Sanju Pal’s case, because I feel that everyone in this Chamber, and everyone in the world, should listen to what she had to go through. In 2018 Sanju was diagnosed with severe endometriosis, and had large fluid-filled cysts on both her ovaries, requiring an immediate operation. She returned to work a month later in severe pain. She was bleeding and could hardly walk, because she had been pushing herself too much for a promotion to senior manager. She told HR in explicit detail how much pain she was in.

Three months after her phased return to work ended, and without any warning, Sanju was sacked. She was told to leave the building immediately and not to contact anyone. She was told, “Do not contact any of the colleagues you have been working with for 10 years now; just get out and leave the building quietly.” She had worked there for 10 years, and she told me that her entire life was based around her work and making sure that she looked after people she was serving at Accenture.

Sanju was sacked for not being ready for promotion within a required timeframe. This is known as the “up or out” policy, used by many corporates, where employees can be dismissed if their manager believes that they cannot be promoted. The termination letter—which, by the way, she received minutes after that meeting—did not state any actual reason for her dismissal. It also did not inform her of her right to appeal, and nor did it refer to the policy that was being followed.

As a Camden girl through and through, who went to Camden School for Girls, Sanju decided not to take this lying down. She took it to an internal tribunal, and the High Court later found that this panel had completely disregarded what she had written in her impact statement. When she then took it to tribunal, the panel ruled that she had not proved that her illness had an ongoing substantial effect on her daily life, and stated that many women with endometriosis had mild symptoms or none at all. The tribunal rejected her claim for disability discrimination and lacked any understanding of the physical impact of her health condition on her own 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 any reasonable adjustments after she was disabled because of her health condition.

I am so proud of Sanju for her tireless campaigning since her unfair dismissal in 2019. Employers must now follow this judgment on considering endometriosis as a disability and providing reasonable adjustments. More needs to be done to ensure that this does not happen to other women who are left physically disabled by endometriosis and other gynaecological conditions. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) has done some brilliant work in this area for years now, but we need a collective voice. We need everyone in the Chamber to stand up and speak about this, because it has been a taboo for too long now.

It is shocking, if the Minister is listening, that not a single gynaecological condition was introduced into the disability guidance of the Equality Act. That basic change could have saved Sanju her job, as well as so much time, money and anxiety, as she spent six years fighting for this unfair dismissal. It could also have made a huge difference for countless other women whom we have not heard about and who are facing the same discrimination in the workplace across the country. One in 10 women suffer from endometriosis, and 69% of sufferers say that they face discrimination at work. Such cases are far too common, leaving one in six women with endometriosis unemployed because of their condition.

Women should not be forced to go to a tribunal just to get the rights that they deserve. That is why I believe that women with endometriosis should be given specific workplace adjustments and the right to reasonable adjustments for their condition. Alongside that, endometriosis should be listed under reoccurring and fluctuating impairments in the guidance for the Equality Act, so that employers actually understand their legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments to women who are suffering because of the condition.

[Dawn Butler]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. You may be coming to this, but it is an incredible—

[Dawn Butler]

Thank you, and you are amazing, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend may be coming to this, but my friend Elaine Banton was the lawyer in the case she refers to. I want to put that on record alongside my hon. Friend’s excellent remarks about her constituent.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend. Elaine Banton definitely deserves a mention in the workplace as well.

There is a lot more I would like to say about this important case, but I am conscious that many women want to speak. However, I just want to mention that when I was growing up—I grew up in a Muslim Asian household—I did not hear anything about endometriosis. I never heard the word “menopause” when growing up. If I was ever on my period, I was told to quickly move away, listen and change, and make sure that my brother did not hear anything. There is a point at which we need to change that.

My mother was very forward in other ways. Growing up in a Muslim household, on Friday nights we always had dinner with our Jewish neighbours. She was very clear about the fact that in our house we could celebrate Christmas, Eid, Durga Puja and Hanukkah—we could do whatever we wanted because we were citizens of the world. But we were simply not allowed to mention our period, menopause or endometriosis. For Sanju’s case, but also for all the South-Asian mothers who are listening out there, this is the time when we need to break the taboo. We need to talk about conditions that affect women, particularly when they affect young girls as well, so that, if they are affected by those conditions in the workplace, they do not feel ashamed and like they have to hide.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful point. However, if we are really going to change things, we need fathers to speak to their daughters. I recall making a deliberate point when my daughter started menstruating. I was standing in the supermarket trying to assess and understand what I was faced with, with the wall of things, with people coming up to me and asking, “Do you want some help?”, and me saying, “No, I need to work my way through this.” We need men to advocate and understand these things as well.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend, who is a staunch feminist—one of the reasons why he will speak in this debate.

I will finish by saying that the justice served to Sanju is a victory not just for her, but for the countless women across the country who have fought so hard to get reasonable adjustments in the workplace. I hope that the Minister will consider this case and that legislation will follow from the Labour Government to ensure that women never again have to face discrimination in the workplace.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. These are really fantastic speeches. So that I do not have to interrupt them, let me say that “you” and “your”, unless you are referring to the Chair, should not be said at all. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.