Hansard

I thank the Government for bringing forward this debate on such an important issue. Although I welcome the fact that some progress has been made on the women’s health plan, as the minister and others have set out, and that the Government is looking forward to the next steps, I fear that many women are still unable to access appropriate healthcare as and when they need to.

Women in Glasgow, especially those from more deprived areas in the region, are less likely to attend breast and cervical screening services than women elsewhere on mainland Scotland. Until very recently, women in Glasgow experienced harassment when attending abortion services, and I acknowledge the success of the work of Gillian Mackay and Back Off Scotland on safe access zones. However, there remain barriers to accessing abortions in Glasgow, where a lack of information on what is available still prevents timely access to such services when they are needed. As is the case elsewhere, women in Glasgow still wait far too long for diagnosis of endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome, which leaves many living in significant pain.

The situation in Glasgow for women must be turned around, and in order for that to happen, we need the Government to take a different direction. In addition, we need a different direction to be taken for specific groups of women, because, as Engender and others have highlighted, minoritised and marginalised women’s health experiences are still not fully recognised or addressed. I will use the rest of my speech to speak about the need for that to change.

Women continue to face stubborn inequalities in how they experience healthcare. Engender and others, including me and my party, are concerned by the slow progress in that regard. Years on from the publication of the women’s health plan, 65 per cent of respondents to research by the Young Women’s Movement in Scotland stated that being disabled is still associated with a lack of healthcare. They cited various reasons for that, including a lack of understanding of the need to treat multiple conditions holistically and, in some cases, bias and discrimination. The women’s health plan highlights that issue, and an Engender research report that was published in 2018 described how disabled women in Scotland experience specific barriers to accessing a range of health services, including a lack of accessible facilities, specialist equipment and accessible information.

The plan acknowledges the importance of considering how sex, gender and disability intersect, and the specific needs and experiences of marginalised disabled women. It concluded:

“It is important for healthcare professionals, and health policy makers, to recognise that a failure to take an intersectional approach can lead to further discrimination or disadvantage.”

I am concerned that many disabled women still face the same problems that were identified in that 2018 report. It has been brought to my attention that access facilities are not being prioritised as part of the development of new health centres. In fact, it appears that those facilities are deemed to be unimportant, as they are the first thing to be cut when health and social care partnerships are looking to reduce costs. The promised Changing Places toilets, for example, and hoists in GP surgeries were not installed in new healthcare centres in my region. I would have thought that the development of new buildings is the perfect opportunity to ensure that access for disabled women is assured, rather than being something that is considered later. However, that opportunity is being missed.

There also seems to be a lack of awareness among healthcare professionals where specialist equipment is in place. For example, in one of the health centres in the Glasgow region, a hoist was available, but none of the GP practices in the building was aware of it.

A report by Glasgow Disability Alliance that was published in 2022 found that the global pandemic has made it even harder for disabled women in Scotland to access women’s healthcare, because many have more complex needs than can be met through their GP surgery. The report also found that some disabled women felt unable to seek healthcare due to a mix of reasons, including the guilt associated with the need for additional things from an overstretched system. Disabled women should not feel guilty for having more complex needs, which—I should not have to say this—they did not ask for.

The report found lengthy delays in accessing health services and that those have

“significant health and life implications, including loss of function and mobility, missing potential problems or conditions and opportunities for preventative interventions”.

The report recommended that disabled women should have the option to be

“accompanied at medical appointments including on admission to hospital for communications and/or support”,

and that disabled women should have access to the equipment that they require.

Given that access to healthcare is a fundamental human right, it is extremely concerning that that was still a recommendation in 2022 and that, as demonstrated by the examples that have been outlined, it still applies today. Disabled women are being failed, and lives are being lost as a result. I was made aware of a situation in which one of my constituents was sadly unable to receive a smear test due to the fact that no hoist was available when she attended her appointment. Heartbreakingly, my constituent later lost her life due to a rare female cancer. I am cognisant of the fact that, if the correct equipment had been available, that outcome could have been different. My thoughts are with my constituent and her family, who have been failed by the current system.

Something must change. The women’s health plan outlined Government plans to launch a wider programme of work to specifically target inequalities across all screening programmes. However, three years on from its publication, not enough progress has been made. In Scottish Labour’s 2024 manifesto, we recognised that and said that, despite the publication of the plan, women continue to face inequalities. We committed to ensuring greater uptake of and ease of access to screening services, including the roll-out of cervical screening self-sampling. We recognise that local GP surgeries are the first port of call when a health problem starts, and we are committed to ensuring that they provide a range of services and to growing multidisciplinary teams, which are crucial.

Those are some of the ways in which we could ensure that disabled women no longer face barriers to basic healthcare. The next plan must be clearer in setting out solutions for improving all women’s healthcare, including unambiguous timescales for delivering the required change. In the words of Glasgow Disability Alliance’s report,

“Our society must be one in which disabled women participate and have our voices heard, on a full and equal basis, in all aspects of our lives, communities and wider society, with choices equal to others and our human rights upheld.”