Caroline Nokes
MP for Romsey and Southampton North · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He will be conscious that there are in the region of 15 more Members wishing to speak in this debate, and we have not yet heard from the Minister, so I am not minded to accept a closure motion at this point.”
“(3) For paragraph (3A) substitute— “(3A) The returning officer shall also provide each polling station with such equipment as is necessary to ensure that relevant persons are able to vote independently and in secret, including— (a) tactile equipment that enables the voter to navigate the ballot paper and accurately mark their chosen candi…”
“(2) During the period commencing 30 minutes before the time appointed for the taking of a poll at an election, and ending 30 minutes after the close of the said poll, a person shall not, in or in the curtilage of a polling station or in any place within 50 metres of such station, for the purpose of promoting the interest of a political pa…”
“New clause 97— Power of Electoral Commission to require disclosure from financial institutions — “In Schedule 19B of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (investigatory powers of Commission), after paragraph 1 insert— “Power to require disclosure from financial institutions 1A(1) The Commission may give a disclosure n…”
“() In paragraph 6 of schedule 6 (Donations from impermissible donors), after “section 54(1)(a)” insert— “or section 55B.” (8) In Schedule 20, in Table after Section 56(3) or (4) (failure to return donations) On summary conviction: statutory maximum or 6 months On indictment: fine or 1 year” Insert— Section 55A(8) (cap on donations) On sum…”
“(2) The specified elections for the purposes of subsection (1) are— (a) UK parliamentary elections, and (b) local government elections in England and Wales.”
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“Instinctively, when we think of Southampton we think of the Solent and the water, but our bid is not just about boat shows and regattas, brilliant though they are; it is also about the ripple effect of our culture, the tide of Solent water that rises not just once, but twice a day, and carries people with it. There is a tendency to think of people using that tide to leave the city. After all we have a park and a theatre named after the Mayflower, Southampton was where the Titanic set sail on her ill-fated maiden voyage, and it is the cruise capital of the UK, but that tide has, as my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) said, also historically brought people to the city.”
“I thank my constituency neighbour, and on this occasion hon. Friend, for making that important point and wonder whether he has predicted one of the next chunks of my contribution. As I have said, we are all celebrating this bid. It is being celebrated by neighbouring authorities and by organisations, business and community groups alike, and an impressive list of ambassadors. It is being supported by the schools, colleges and universities across the region, by the National Oceanography Centre, by our collective museums, art galleries and theatres—which my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) referenced—by the stadiums, parks and sports centres and above all by the people.”
“The Spitfire was designed and built here, in Woolston, but tested over the hills of King’s Somborne, much further north in my constituency, and it protected us during the second world war. The first ever website was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, a professor at Southampton University, and while one may not be able to see and hear the world wide web in the same way one could the Spitfire, it has come to dominate our lives, as the debate immediately prior to this one ably demonstrated. And this is a bid earthed in our land, with the open parks and the adjacent New Forest, and the South Downs national parks. It is also a bid for the future, celebrating technology and the changes that that brings. So I say to the Minister, and to all those assessing this bid, that we know that we have a great deal to offer, so let us make it so.”
“I would like to pay tribute to the Southampton bid team, who have made legacy their focus, recognising the year of culture would be 2025, but securing ongoing commitments from businesses and organisations which stretch far beyond that. They have looked at the challenges we face, contemplated the difficulties that the pandemic has brought, and recognised that mental health, particularly for men, has been a big issue, and they have developed a programme of events to include everyone, regardless of age, gender, ability, ethnicity and faith. They have celebrated our rivers—the Itchen and the Test, which combine in the Solent. We have a rich maritime history, which you might expect to be an enormous theme. But this is also a region which has much to celebrate in the sky.”
“Those who understand the region know there is a challenging rivalry between the two cities, but there is wide recognition that what benefits one will also benefit the other, in terms of visitors, volunteering hours, participation and even levelling up. Levelling up is not something that is geographically limited to the north. There are challenges in the south as well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) said. Sometimes Southampton has been described as a northern city in the south, but of course we do have our own character. You only have to look at what city of culture has achieved for Liverpool and for Hull, bringing places together, bringing a focus for activities and an ongoing legacy. That is one of the crucial parts of the city of culture.”
“There are other, different types of temple, across the region—those that celebrate sport like the Ageas bowl, which my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) has already referenced, the home of Hampshire cricket, in neighbouring Eastleigh—and my thanks to that borough for supporting the bid. The village of Hambledon, known as the cradle of cricket, is in the Winchester City Council area, which is also backing this bid. Even in the Solent itself we play cricket. Who would have thought that it was a water sport, but the annual Bramble Bank cricket match happens in the Solent, in late August or early September, dependent upon the tides I have already referred to, literally half way between Southampton and Cowes—which brings me on to some of the more interesting partner relationships, because even Portsmouth is backing this bid.”
“In 2019, another bid ambassador, Southampton’s own Craig David, played there—a concert, I hasten to add, not on the pitch. And we do music in the city, from youth orchestras to festivals, at concerts on the common, and in places like the Engine Rooms and the Joiners. And we most certainly do food. The bid chairman is Masterchef winner Shelina Permalloo, who runs her Mauritian street kitchen in Bedford place. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor had his first job at Kuti’s famous brasserie, and we have food from literally everywhere. I always say that food brings communities together, and whether it is the big iftar at the Medina mosque or the langar at the gurdwara in Peterborough road, you can point to examples across our city where we come together to celebrate and to eat.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. She is right. We do have a rich maritime history. The trading character of Southampton but also the Royal Navy heritage of Portsmouth and Gosport are key to this. As I was saying, when it comes to faith, it is not just about the mosques, the gurdwaras, the Christian churches, the Friends meeting house, the synagogue and the Vedic temple; there are also the shrines to the sporting prowess that the region has in abundance. In this bid we celebrate many religions—that of sport, of music, of food. St Mary’s is a fabulous church, where the annual Titanic memorial service is held, but it is also where we worship idols like Ted Bates, Lawrie McMenemy and the current bid ambassador James Ward-Prowse.”
“I would also like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Dr Wallis) for his incredible bravery. Can the Minister reassure me, and indeed the whole House, that legislation on conversion therapy will be introduced to this place prior to the conference that is scheduled to be hosted by the Government in the summer? Will he let us know how preparations for the conference are going?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. He has answered many of the questions that arose over the weekend, but may I press him specifically on when he expects phase 2 to start and what work is already going on with non-governmental organisations? Those organisations make the point that they have many people who have already been checked by the Disclosure and Barring Service, but the volunteers coming forward in my constituency tend not to have been. We know that there are already backlogs in DBS checking, so can he assure me that that will be sped up? I have a practical question about people who are planning to move home over the course of the next six months. Will they still be able to take part even if their address changes?”
“So on International Women’s Day this year, I cannot celebrate, but I have to have hope that, as the women of influence in this country, we can make sure that we do better.”
“This life is the present, her reality; and that life was what she had before—freedom, and her coffee with friends, her jeans, her lipstick and her life in Kyiv. While we celebrate International Women’s Day here, we have to recognise that, just as Yaroslava has a “this” and a “that” life, there is a life here and a life there: here there are no bombs, there are jeans in the shops and we can drink coffee whenever we want; and there they have none of those things. There are little girls in bomb shelters singing the song from “Frozen”, female doctors dodging bombs to treat the sick, female MPs staying defiantly in Kyiv—their capital—and a former Miss Ukraine brandishing her assault weapon in army uniform. There are women on the borders of Ukraine with their children, having left their husbands, their fathers and theirs son behind to fight.”
“Yaroslava wants to be able to buy jeans, but she does not know whether the shops will be open, or whether the small shop she has gone to today will be open between 12 noon and 3 pm, so she has launched “operation jeans”, because she just wants to have a spare pair of trousers to wear. She has established her regular no make-up war look, and she posts photographs of it. I want to imagine what that would be like for each and every one of us coming into this Chamber with no make-up. That is why I referenced cosmetic procedures and the British Beauty Council, because we take all that for granted, and if we were her, we might have to accept that, for the conceivable future, everything will look different and our faces will look different. Yaroslava talks of “this” life and “that” life.”
“I want to talk about one specific woman, Yaroslava Antipina. I do not know her—I had never heard of her before the war started—but she is keeping a daily diary of her life in war, and I know from what she has written that she wants to have her life back. She wants to be able to drink coffee in peace with the people she has met on Twitter. She has fled her home, and I wonder what it would feel like for all of us if we had been forced out of our homes and made to live again with our mothers in a different part of the country. She has taught me that, in Ukraine, International Women’s Day is a holiday—there is a great idea, and perhaps we could introduce that here—but it is not a holiday from war. She wears a sweatshirt that says “Superwoman”, and she genuinely is one.”
“We need to be protecting young women from the dangers of injectables and cosmetic procedures that can go horribly wrong and alter their looks forever, and we need to be protecting young women from that “Love Island” identical face, which actually looks pretty awful. I would also like to celebrate the brilliant female scientists who made vaccines for covid possible. But, actually, today I do not want to celebrate at all; I want to talk about International Women’s Day and the women we have seen in war who have been impacted by the Putin invasion of Ukraine. There are those killed by the war, those reporting on the war whether as a journalist or a citizen journalist via social media, and the doctors in the hospitals tending to the sick and the wounded, including the maternity hospitals that we have seen bombed.”
“That could be a real game changer for young women, and indeed men, for whom the online harms they currently face every single day can spill over into real life. I have no doubt about her mission and determination to bring forward a fiercely effective piece of law. There are other colleagues I want to celebrate. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), who is here, has done so much brilliant work on botox. It seemed really trivial this morning to be talking about the beauty industry, lipstick and botox, but her private Member’s legislation—the Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Act 2021—makes it illegal to give botox to under-18s.”
“She spoke about bias—her personal bias—in employing more women in her organisation, and that is one bias we do not wish to break. I would like to pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who has done so much work on the menopause and women’s health. We can look forward in a few short weeks to the female health strategy coming forward, and I would like to say that, in her role as the Minister for patient safety and primary care, she has been a breath of fresh air. Staying on that theme, I also look forward to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport making a real difference with her forthcoming online safety legislation.”
“I also want to talk about the female entrepreneurs I met this week at somewhere far more traditional—Goldman Sachs. They are absolute leaders in their fields, and I want to talk specifically about a very young woman, Thuria Wenbar. She is the chief executive officer of e-Pharmacy, and she talked about her excitement at launching menopause products over the counter. She is still in her 20s, but she was talking about the menopause, and that shows how far we have come. It also pays tribute to the work of my hon. Friend—and she is my hon. Friend—the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who has done so much to break down the taboo and stigma around the menopause. Thuria spoke absolutely unashamedly of her determination to create prosperity and jobs for other women.”
“11 Downing Street to hear the brilliant women of the British Beauty Council talking about their new project to launch jobs in STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—and beauty, focusing on the fact that science and beauty go hand in hand. We have to make sure that brilliant women in this country study science subjects and go on to fabulous careers in scientific areas. We heard from an amazing woman, Tumi Siwoku, who spoke about her journey into the beauty industry via science-based A-levels. She was meant to study medicine and become a doctor, but her act of rebellion was to make sure that she went into beauty—and, my goodness, I love rebellious women. They are the ones who push boundaries, break down barriers and do the unexpected.”
“It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate and, this year, I have doggedly looked for things to celebrate, perhaps with a grim sense of determination. I will start by focusing on a few positive things, such as a young boy who, in his school assembly on Monday, said to me, “Tomorrow’s International Women’s Day. What are you doing to celebrate?”. That is how far we have come—even 12-year-old boys wish to celebrate alongside us. I thank Hugo for asking me what I was going to do. I told him that I would speak in today’s debate and celebrate international women. I want to celebrate female entrepreneurship in this country. This morning I have been at No.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments on this matter; she is making a really powerful point. Does she feel, as I do, that this is sending a message that the Government do not trust women to make their own decisions about their own reproductive health?”
“Order. May I remind the Minister that she does not need to fill up all the time, and that she should try to stick to buses in the north-west?”
“Snails also move “at pace”. No date has yet been set for a humanitarian sponsorship visa scheme, and as a result people who are coming forward with generous offers are advising their Ukrainian friends to apply for visitors’ visas. But what of those who do not have passports? What of children who are completely undocumented? When my hon. Friend the Minister says that he is moving at pace, he should bear in mind that the pace needs to be a great deal faster.”
“Can my hon. Friend explain how the decision to end telemedicine for early medical abortion supports women who responded to the Department’s own consultation, how it works in line with the Royal College of General Practice, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the Royal College of Midwives, and what the dangers are in ignoring their advice when pulling together a women’s health strategy?”
“As might be expected of a former Immigration Minister, I pay tribute to all the hard-working Home Office staff, particular those in region. Community sponsorship works—it really does—and we have long been recognised as global leader in it. Can I be reassured that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will make sure that this scheme works at pace, however, because that is one of the biggest lessons we have had to learn? We need this to work quickly because people are being bombed as they try to flee Ukraine. We often hear the language of burden sharing when we talk about refugees, but it is not a burden. We should regard it as a privilege to be in a position to help.”
“I know that my hon. Friend the Minister agrees with the Law Commission that misogyny should not be a hate crime. Does she not also think it appropriate that she should agree with the Law Commission that public sexual harassment should be a specific offence? I would like to echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who has just said that women should be able to live their lives “freely, safely and without harassment”. Can we stop looking hard at this and actually bring forward some legislation to make it happen?”
“If we are to start tackling the cultures that underpin violence against women, we must look at the cultures that mean that some men think it is okay to harass women on the street and on public transport.”
“However, if we are to go to its recommendations on misogyny and the complications that it rightly highlighted—this is an incredibly difficult area—we should also look at public sexual harassment, which it has also said should be a specific crime. I started by saying that I am a woman in a hurry, and I am. I welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister’s comments on what the Government are planning to do on public sexual harassment, but this feels like a missed opportunity. I look for confirmation on whether the specific legislative vehicle—this looks very much like one—will be the victims Bill or something tailored to PSH, because this absolutely matters.”
“I am the first to acknowledge that spiking is not necessarily a gendered crime, but in many instances it is, and we know that young women in particular fall victim to it. Although there are concerns around spiking for robbery, for other forms of violence and abuse and, indeed, in some cases, just for entertainment, a massive proportion of it is about taking sexual advantage—usually of women. As hon. Members might expect—it was inevitable—I turn to amendment 72 on misogyny. Consistency is important, so I have always said that I would accept and welcome what the Law Commission recommended in its review.”
“As a woman who is perennially in a hurry and terribly impatient, I will ensure that my contribution is blissfully short. There is much in the Bill that I feel encouraged about. As hon. Members might expect, as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I will focus specifically on those areas that affect women. Inevitably, I will always say to the Government that they have missed opportunities, that they have not gone far enough and that more could have been done. I very much feel that the Bill could have done more, but I very much welcome the amendment on voyeurism and breastfeeding, which was put forward by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and has been accepted by the Government. That is a step in the right direction for women. I also welcome Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 70 on spiking.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is in our schools that those calls are strongest, which means that young women in their school uniforms are being significantly impacted. They feel scared to walk home alone. They are given advice to stay to well-lit areas, to ensure that they walk in areas with CCTV and to be careful on public transport. Yet again, we are saying, “Girls, be careful,” and not, “Men, don’t do it.” That is why I feel so strongly about specific legislation on public sexual harassment that empowers women to point at behaviours and say, “That is a crime.””
“The Women and Equalities Committee is about to do an enormous piece of work about the cultures that underpin this problem and hopes to come up with recommendations that the Government will listen to and act on. We want to see legislation that makes women feel safer because they can point at behaviours and say, “That is a specific crime,” that allows perpetrators to look at behaviours and think, “Actually, I shouldn’t do that—I might get in trouble,” and that allows the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to look at behaviours and think, “There’s the crime.””
“It’s when the white van men turn up.” She told a tale of how, in the depths of winter, when wearing a beanie hat, a puffer coat and a mask—it was at the height of covid—a man walked up to her, put his hands either side of her face and said, “You’re too beautiful to be doing this job.” I have spoken to colleagues in this place who are eminent lawyers— they know much better than me what is criminal and what is not—and asked them, “Where’s the crime?” Not one of them could come up with an actual crime for that. The hon. Lady is therefore right: that was not sex-based; it was just harassment in the same way as we see people stood outside abortion clinics hurling abuse at people going to access those services. We must ensure that abuse directed at women on the grounds of their gender or sex is tackled, and tackled effectively.”
“The hon. Lady makes an important and powerful point. It is imperative that we look at this issue not just in terms of sexual harassment. I apologise for detaining hon. Members a moment longer than I intended, but I want to highlight the case of a constituent who came to see me. She was 23-years-old and had a job in Waitrose pushing trolleys around the car park. She said, “I hate lunch time.” That seemed an odd comment to make, so I asked, “Is it particularly busy at lunch time?” She said, “No.”
“Later this evening, I will attend the event downstairs—it is on now—looking at the Government’s strategy. If we are serious, we must send a clear and powerful message to both victims and perpetrators about what is and is not criminal. Everyone in this House knows a victim; we also all know a perpetrator.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. I hope that I did not in any way give the impression that men are not victims, because, yes, they are. When we talk about violence perpetrated against others, sometimes we do not adequately identify the many instances in which young men, and young gay men in particular, can fall victim to such horrific behaviours. I want to see something on the statute book, and I will press my right hon. Friend the Minister for something quickly. It is not good enough to kick this issue into the long grass and say that we need another review or more consultation. We see that too often. Young women, the girls of the Girl Guides, those from Plan International UK, older women—the Soroptimists have summoned me to tell me that this must be done urgently—and the Women’s Institute all want action.”
“Public sexual harassment is a gateway crime to some of the more serious sexual offences highlighted by my hon. Friend. She may not agree that misogyny should be a hate crime, but does she agree with the Law Commission that public sexual harassment should be a specific crime? Please can we see action to have it legislated for quickly rather than pushed into the long grass?”
“My right hon. Friend has made that point a number of a times during his speech, and it is worth highlighting. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will do some great work on the women’s health strategy, but time and again my right hon. Friend has said that women’s voices are being ignored and dismissed. They are told that they are imagining things and that it is in their heads. It is not good enough.”
“As my right hon. Friend the member for Maidenhead said, the career of the doctor who discovered the problem with Primodos was impacted by that discovery, for the rest of her career. We cannot have that situation. Just as the airline industry has a no-blame reporting system, can we also have that in our NHS, so that people have the confidence to report, knowing it will not come back upon them? Then we will not have medicines and devices that do harm, in the same way that we no longer have planes that simply drop out of the air.”
“Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell, who passed me a note mid-way through the debate. We have to make sure that this stops. We must not continue to ignore the voices of women who say they had a procedure that has damaged them, but who are told it is a mental problem and it is all in their head. We cannot have a situation where people continue to be ignored, or where drugs come on to the market and are left in use and circulation for decades, before somebody recognises that there is a problem. If we go back to thalidomide and valproate, it was decades before people recognised that there was an issue. The point was made earlier that the aircraft and airlines industry has a no-blame, no-consequence reporting system for errors, so that if someone finds something that is wrong, it will not come back on them in their career.”
“I remember being a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions. We did a lot of work around people who had long-term conditions and whether they should have to go through the reassessment process. This would be an excellent opportunity for my hon. Friend the Minister to outline to us what work she is doing with the DWP to ensure that these women can be included in that group, so that they do not have to go through endless reassessments time and again to establish whether they are still suffering pain from mesh. That is an important point, because that would give them a sense that we are making some sort of progress. That is my specific question for the Minister, which I hope she will be able to answer. I will not take credit for my final, really important point, which should be given to my right hon.”
“He responded by indicating that the Government were “committed to making rapid progress”— I emphasise the word rapid— “in addressing all the areas that” the Cumberlege report “mentions, including the one that my right hon. Friend covered today.” —[ Official Report , 15 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 964.] Yet we are still waiting for redress and for the specialist centres, and the families are waiting for an acknowledgment that they face additional costs, day in, day out, and they want help with them. I want to ask a specific question of the Minister, which was provoked in my mind by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who sadly cannot be with us for the conclusion of this debate. He made the point about disability and the women who have had mesh implants whose ability to work is impacted forever.”
“Some are born with spina bifida, a cleft palate, heart defects or limb malformations. They have all sorts of additional challenges, which are expensive. They need redress and specialist centres where their children can get the support they need, to lead as full a life as possible. Guess what? Their parents also need respite. They need be confident that their children are being properly looked after, cared for, supported and helped to counteract all the challenges they face, and they need a break, but they have been offered none of those things. So, in September 2021 I asked my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister if he would recognise that there was an additional cost—a fiscal impact—on these families and if would he commit to making redress available.”
“The third date that I want to highlight—this is where I will provide some air cover to the Minister—is 15 September 2021. Rarely in a Member’s career does the opportunity come along to ask question No. 1 at Prime Minister’s questions, and on 15 September it was my turn. It will probably never happen to me again, so I carefully considered what issue to raise. We all have brilliant constituency issues that we want to raise or things that we have been campaigning on, and suddenly, in a Zoom call with Emma Murphy and Janet Williams, I went, “Do you know what? I have question No. 1 on Wednesday.” I used my question to ask the Prime Minister about the specific issue facing the parents of children impacted by foetal valproate syndrome: their children have learning difficulties and additional needs.”
“I had hope, as did the campaigning women from In-FACT, and the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who chairs the APPG. We all had hope that the recommendations would be accepted and acted on with speed. Then, on 21 July 2021, a whole year later, rather than having an oral statement in the House, when we could ask the Minister what was going to happen, and what action was going to be taken on the recommendations, the Government snuck out a written ministerial statement on the last day before recess so we had no opportunity to bring forward the concerns that we had on so many of the recommendations either being rejected or only accepted in part. Those campaigners felt despair—not the hope that they had a year before, but despair.”
“Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) brought forward the Cumberlege report, which was so valuable. I will give a bit of a timeline: on 8 July 2020 that report was published; on 9 July, I was in the House for the oral statement on the Cumberlege report. I can remember my hon. Friend the Minister’s predecessor, the then Minister of State at the Department for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), actually giving us hope and confidence. I listened to my right hon. Friend that day in the House and thought that she had the tone of her response absolutely right. She promised to take away the issues that we were all raising. She promised to look at all of the recommendations that the baroness had brought forward so competently and effectively.”
“Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) pointed out, we have been here before—the use of Roaccutane, which I remember taking probably 30 years ago. I had to sign all sorts of bits of paper promising not to get pregnant. Then, when my daughter was prescribed it as an 11-year-old, she had to have a pregnancy test every single month— at 11—to demonstrate that she was not pregnant and that it was therefore safe to give her the drug. The same measures were not put in place for valproate. Emma and Janet went digging around in archives; they have made endless freedom of information requests, and they have had their work recognised by the World Health Organisation. The pressure that they put on Members to convey the importance of a proper investigation to people like my right hon.”
“I do not know why that issue stuck with me so clearly, other than that two amazing women—Emma Murphy and Janet Williams—came to see me when I was a very newly elected MP and spoke to me about valproate. I am not an evangelist for banning the use of valproate—it is such an important drug, and has a valuable impact on those patients with epilepsy who need it to support them and manage their conditions well—but it is imperative to recognise that the dangers of valproate were known for many decades but not articulated to those women who were taking it and were of child-bearing age. We have, for decades, had really effective pregnancy prevention programmes for various drugs. I always highlight—as my right hon.”
“I urge her to ensure that those voices are listened to ahead of the final strategy being published. We have heard it all today: sodium valproate; Primodos; mesh. I always hear “the victims of mesh”, and I absolutely regard them as that; they are victims of a surgical process that has left them in absolute agony. Each of us here this afternoon has a different perspective and interest. It is absolutely right that we all have highlighted the particular areas of concern to us. Of course, I have victims of mesh living in my constituency. I also have a wonderful family whose daughter has been the victim of Primodos. Her story is one that always resonated with me, because she is exactly the same age as I am, and has been living with her disabilities since 1972. However, I really want to talk about sodium valproate.”
“It is a huge pleasure to speak in this debate. I extend my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) on opening the debate in an incredibly sensitive and thoughtful way. I hope that I can follow his lead and not get angry at the Minister. I do not blame her for this, and I know that she has a very real and personal commitment to the women’s health strategy, which we will see come forward in the spring—I was grilling special advisers on that only this morning. However, I urge her to listen carefully to the voices she has heard today, and to recognise that Members of Parliament speak up on behalf of their own constituents. We hear in our surgeries, week in and week out, about the issues that are affecting women and impacting their wellbeing and health.”