Fixing the system: Reducing women’s reproductive inequalities. A Report by the APPG on Sexual and Reproductive Health (April 2025)

Summary

The most recent Labour Party manifesto made a promise: “Never again will women’s health be neglected. Labour will prioritise women’s health as we reform the NHS”. This report takes that promise as a backdrop to an examination of inequalities in women’s sexual and reproductive health.

It starts with the observation that women’s reproductive health has historically been overlooked by policy makers, with only 2% of medical research funding spent on pregnancy, childbirth and female reproductive health. This, it says, “leaves stark evidence gaps about female-specific health”.

There are also “acute variations of women’s access to local reproductive health services due to the fragmented way the system is designed and delivered”. According to the authors, these variations deepen inequalities. Problems include the following:

• Care pathways that are disjointed, difficult to navigate and create artificial divisions between contraception, sexual and reproductive health.
• A lack of ethnicity reporting, leading to disparities in care and outcomes.
• Cuts to Public Health Grant funding, with real terms spending on contraception falling by 29% between 2015/16 and 2022/23, and with big reductions in the availability of specialist sexual and reproductive health clinics. These cuts “tend to be greater in more deprived areas, which compounds and entrenches existing health inequalities”.

There are further recommendations, at both the national and the local and regional levels. The report’s authors are clear that 'sexual and reproductive health forms a central part of women’s health', and call on the government to deliver on its manifesto promise.