Equality Act 2010 Guidance: Gynaecological Conditions
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq) for securing this debate to raise an excellent question. We can clearly see a troubling difference between the care delivered for women’s conditions and that delivered for conditions affecting the general population, which is an issue I have raised with my local NHS board. As hon. Members will know, health is a devolved matter in Scotland, but equality is not. I am open to any solution that would help the women and girls in my constituency to get the healthcare they need, when they need it. When I met NHS Lanarkshire in November 2025, we discussed waiting lists. I was told that the board aimed to eliminate two-year waits by the spring, which I thought was progress, relatively speaking. However, there was a catch: the exception was gynaecology. I wrote to ask what the plan was for that, but was told that it was difficult and challenging. They were not able to share a plan, nor did they confirm that ensuring that women received the same levels of healthcare as men was a priority. It is true that they are operating in very difficult circumstances, and the SNP-led Scottish Government must take their share of responsibility, but this exception is not the answer. For endometriosis, the average wait in England is nine years and four months, and in Scotland, it is 10 years and two months. That is more than a decade of pain and more, as my hon. Friend described so well. The dreams that young women so rightly have for themselves can be lost in this process, which is devastating. Many of us have heard somebody say, “Well, if men suffered from this, they would have found a cure,” but there is an even more modest question that we need to ask: what do we need to do to make sure that women get the treatment that already exists? Women are not born to endure. They are not born to accept pain or incapacitation as part of the feminine experience, and when they are ill, they should not be dismissed. They should not be told—it happens at every stage of life, quite frankly—that it is their age or, if it is really bad, that they could take a paracetamol. These examples are, and have been, far too familiar to too many women for far too long. We all know that these problems run deep, and my hon. Friend has cut to the heart of the issue. Much more needs to be done. It should not take a rewriting of the Equality Act to make it happen, but she is right to ask the question, and I thank her for it.