I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the censorship of women’s health and wellbeing content online.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I want to flag at the beginning of this debate that I will be using a selection of words that big tech deems too sexual for its platforms. I hope everyone in this room can hold their composure and not get too flustered when I mention “sexual” terms such as vaginal atrophy and pelvic prolapse. To reassure the Chair, the precedent has already been set in the House for most of these terms. “Vagina” was first used in the House in 1961; “labia minora” in 1983; “orgasm” in 1974; “clitoris” in 1971; and “vulva” goes all the way back to the 1880s.

I must make a point about the historical use of the word “orgasm”. My team had a really interesting time searching Hansard for this debate. As they trawled through it, they found really interesting examples of “orgasm” being used, which I find quite entertaining. In 1978 the former Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch spoke passionately in favour of the creation of the Defence Select Committee, saying:

“I am firmly convinced that to discuss defence in the House in the traditional way is merely to give everyone the chance of an emotional orgasm.”—[Official Report, 3 April 1978; Vol. 947, c. 144.]

In 1982 the former Member for Grimsby spoke against the horrors of what would happen if cable television became the norm, warning that

“We shall finish up with wall-to-wall orgasm”

and

“constant pornography”.—[Official Report, 2 December 1982; Vol. 33, c. 471.]

With the country totally fed up with politics, I find it refreshing to remember that we in this House have the ability to discuss with passion what most of the country would find very dull. For millions of women and girls today, social media is where they learn about things like menopause, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, fibroids, vaginismus, dysmenorrhoea, bacterial vaginosis—are we all managing to control ourselves hearing these terms?—and countless other aspects of women’s health. If social media had been prevalent when I was desperately trying to figure out why my periods hurt more than giving birth, I am sure I would have been able to advocate for myself with my GP and receive my adenomyosis diagnosis far earlier than I did.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an important topic. She is very kind to give way. Does she agree with me that social media and the internet are great tools for people who suffer from unusual conditions or are a part of small communities? It is important that tech platforms do not penalise those communities by letting their algorithms stop those topics being discussed.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. He makes a really important point. It is so ingrained in us to go first to the internet to search for information. We have agreed ways to make sure health information is proper health information and that we are not getting bad science, but even when using the ticks that are supplied by various platforms, advice is still being shadow-banned. The online world is where women ask questions when they are often too embarrassed to ask elsewhere about period pain, discharge, lactation, or how to use a tampon safely.

I speak as a recently departed member of the ministerial team that delivered the women’s health strategy and a former Minister responsible for digital health. Of course we must protect people from harmful content, but does my hon. Friend agree with me that at a time when medical misogyny is alive and thriving and women’s health outcomes are worse than men’s, we should think about how we can more responsibly leverage the algorithms to generate discussion, not silence it, about reproductive rights, cancer awareness, menstruation, menopause and everything else that she has mentioned?

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I met some survivors of vulval cancer this morning. Even though they included a former midwife, a health advocate and other people who were well-informed, they told me about their struggle they experienced when advocating for themselves and to be taken seriously by their GP. They knew something was wrong with their vulvas, but they could not get through to their GP. Luckily, they all did; they are all doing well and have responded to their cancer treatment, but they might have been able to advocate effectively sooner had they been able to access more information than they found online. There are more women out there in exactly the same situation.

Words such as “tampon” are being suppressed by big tech platforms. “Shadow-banning” is the term for when users can still technically post but their visibility is secretly throttled. Their posts stop appearing in feeds, their reach collapses, their engagement disappears and their followers cannot find them. In the examples I have seen, the user is never clearly informed about it. That is censorship without accountability, which is harming education, charities and businesses, reinforcing stigma and, in some cases, putting women’s lives at risk. We need to call that what it is: algorithmic sexism.

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has removed or restricted dozens of accounts belonging to abortion providers, women’s health campaigners and reproductive health organisations across the world. These takedowns began last October and have affected more than 50 organisations globally, some of which support tens of thousands of women. Repro Uncensored, a non-governmental organisation that tracks digital censorship focused on gender, health and justice, documented 210 instances of account removal and severe restriction this year, compared with 81 last year. That is not random moderation, it is escalation.

The Sex Talk Arabic, a UK-based Arabic-language sexual health platform, says it receives warnings from Meta almost weekly. The organisation’s former director, Fatma Ibrahim, said that Meta repeatedly informed it that posts about sexuality, reproductive health and sex education would not be recommended to others because they supposedly violated the platform’s rules. Then the warnings escalated, and Meta began to simply remove its posts.

Examining Meta’s community guidelines allows us to understand why these organisations are so alarmed. Meta says that it allows nudity for “educational”, “medical” and “awareness-raising content”, but that is clearly not what is happening in practice. Under its policies relating to “adult sexual activity”, which it supposedly bans outright, Meta includes “menstruation” alongside “dismemberment”, “cannibalism” and “bestiality”. Something that every woman does monthly—an involuntary biological process connected to the menstrual cycle that is experienced by billions of women—is grouped alongside acts of violence and abuse. What does that tell women about their bodies and how they are being understood by these systems?

This morning, I met representatives of the Eve Appeal, the UK’s leading gynaecological cancer charity, who handed me a letter that they wrote to Meta after attempts to reach it by other avenues failed. They told me that they are extremely concerned about the suppression of some of their content. Last month, The Eve Appeal shared a medically accurate illustration of vulval anatomy on Instagram. It was not pornography or explicit material, but a labelled, educational diagram intended to help people understand their vulva, recognise changes in their cervix and identify symptoms of vulval cancer. The post had a Patient Information Forum tick, the gold standard for health information content. The Eve Appeal has posted the same content three or four times over the last five years, but last month, Instagram removed the post for alleged “nudity or sexual activity”. The Eve Appeal’s account received a warning and its appeal was rejected. Eventually, the post was reinstated, but it was hidden under a “sensitive content” screen, warning users that the image “may be upsetting”. I have seen the image, and it is literally a line drawing. The Eve Appeal received no explanation, and the sensitive content warning has stifled engagement on its post.

One of the Eve Appeal advocates, Zoe, told me,

“When I was diagnosed with vulva cancer, I was clueless. Why? Because I was taught the whole thing was a vagina. The use of pictures with labels of anatomy and names would have been a great help. Penis, prostate, balls, breasts, ovaries, cervix and womb are not taboo, however vulva and vagina, the two rarest of the gynaecological cancers, are being censored and dismissed.”

The Eve Appeal’s educational posts are designed to save lives. Hiding women’s anatomy behind “sensitive content” warnings does not protect women; it silences them.

Such policies can even put lives at risk. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who could not make it here today, has been raising awareness of another extraordinary case involving Thames Valley Air Ambulance. The charity launched a campaign highlighting that one in three women suffering cardiac arrest do not receive CPR before emergency crews arrive. Why? Because bystanders are often hesitant to touch women’s chests, remove bras, expose nipples or remove clothing in an emergency. Thames Valley Air Ambulance created an educational content video using a female CPR mannequin to demonstrate how to apply defibrillator pads correctly. Facebook removed the post and Instagram temporarily deleted it. The reason? The female mannequin breached community standards. Again, after appeal the content was restored with a blurred sensitivity warning. The charity responded:

“If we can’t even share an image of an educational use manikin online without it being deemed ‘inappropriate’, how are we expected to normalise removing a real person’s bra to…save their life?”

As you can imagine, similar content with a male mannequin is never removed or shadow-banned.

Education campaigns like those save lives, yet the algorithms of big tech treat them as indecent. While charities are struggling to share lifesaving information, women’s health businesses are also being throttled. The global femtech market is projected to exceed $97 billion by 2030. It should be one of the great growth sectors of the future; instead, female-led health businesses are facing relentless moderation barriers.

Bodyform’s Vagina Uncensored campaign was censored 22 times in one month across Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X. One advert containing the words “menstrual cycle” and showing a sanitary towel with blood was rejected by Meta unless it carried an 18-plus warning. To remind people, periods start much younger than 18 years old and the questions start even earlier than that. Apparently, period products are considered inappropriate for under-18s despite the fact that the vast majority of girls begin menstruating well before that age.

Sixty-four per cent. of women’s health businesses have lost revenue because of those restrictions. Some businesses report losses of half a million pounds a year. One company said their app downloads collapsed from 250 per week to just 50. Another said years of content creation vanished overnight. Smaller femtech start-ups are the hardest hit. Hanx, a women’s sexual wellness company, said nine out of 10 of its adverts were rejected in the early days, and even now 34% of all its adverts are rejected. Meanwhile, treatments for erectile dysfunction are explicitly permitted under Meta’s advertising rules; women’s libido products are not.

Tommy’s, the pregnancy and baby charity, had a video flagged as inappropriate because it included the word vagina. The video featured a researcher studying the vaginal microbiome to better understand infections linked to premature birth and miscarriage. Again, educational, evidence-based medical information was treated as inappropriate content.

Ordinary women are seeing this happen every day. Influencer Charlotte Emily has more than 90,000 Instagram followers—something I think every politician in this room would like. She said that posts about periods, body image, menopause and women’s health perform dramatically worse than her fashion or lifestyle content. She said that simply using the word “period” instead of euphemisms like “Aunt Flo” reduces visibility. Think about the message that sends to young girls online: that medically accurate language about their own body is unacceptable and that they should hide behind euphemisms and embarrassment.

This is not accidental. Words connected to women’s healthcare are treated as suspect content when they should be treated as healthcare education. That is the same prejudice that women have faced for centuries, simply translated into code. Victorian doctors dismissed women’s suffering as hysteria; today’s algorithms suppress the words that women search when they need to find out whether what is happening to their body is normal. The technology has changed, but the sexism has not.

This censorship has consequences far beyond embarrassment or inconvenience. When trusted information is hidden, misinformation flourishes. The Government have now acknowledged that poor-quality online health information harms women’s outcomes—I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) for his work on that—particularly around reproductive health, contraception, miscarriage, menstruation, menopause and infertility. I am glad to see us acknowledging that, but tackling misinformation means nothing if accurate information is suppressed in the first place. If charities are hidden, educators are shadow-banned, doctors are down-ranked and medically approved content about the uterus, cervix, vulva and vagina is blurred, conspiracy theorists and grifters fill the vacuum and women suffer.

I am coming to the end of my speech, but I want to mention that Essity surveyed about 4,000 adults and found that two thirds look online for health advice, while half rely on social media for health and wellbeing information. Among young people, that number is even higher. Overwhelmingly, the public reject this censorship. Nearly eight out of 10 adults said that words such as “vagina”, “period”, “boobs” and “menopause” should not be restricted when used educationally. The public understand what platforms apparently do not: women’s anatomy is not obscene, women’s health is not inappropriate and education is not pornography.

So what must happen now? First, big tech companies must stop hiding behind opaque moderation systems. They must explain how their algorithms operate, why women’s health content is disproportionately targeted and how appeals are reviewed. Secondly, the Government must stop allowing this issue to fall between policy silos. This is simultaneously a health issue, a women’s equality issue, an online safety issue and a digital regulation issue. It requires co-ordinated action between departments, regulators and the affected organisations. Thirdly, platforms should work directly with clinicians, educators and trusted charities to establish verified pathways for evidence-based health content. Finally, we need a cultural shift. Women and girls deserve to talk openly about periods, menopause, infertility, miscarriage, sex, orgasms, puberty and breastfeeding and every other aspect of their health without shame. They deserve medically accurate information without censorship.

Ultimately, this debate is not only about algorithms. It is about power: who gets heard, who gets visibility, whose bodies are treated as acceptable and whose health is considered legitimate. Right now, the message that many women receive online is this: “Your body is inappropriate. Your anatomy is shameful. Your health is controversial.” It is also about autonomy. If we can make informed choices, we have autonomy, but until big tech changes course, women will continue to pay the price in lost education, lost opportunity, lost trust and, in some cases, lost lives. The technology companies have the money and they have the ability; what they lack is the will. It is about time they found it.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I strongly back this Government’s commitment to tackling online gender-based harms. I am pleased by the progress that has been made, which includes making intimate image abuse, cyber-flashing and choking priority offences under the Online Safety Act and fast-tracking legislation to ban the creation of non-consensual intimate deepfakes.

Recognising the growing threat of technology-enabled abuse is vital for the Government’s targets to halve violence against women and girls during the next decade, but we must ensure that these efforts do not lead to unintended consequences that could undermine the safety and wellbeing of women and girls in other ways. The shadow-banning of medically accurate, evidence-based women’s health content can seriously restrict women’s ability to speak out and find information about their bodies online.

I recently led a Westminster Hall debate considering the e-petition on statutory menstrual leave for people with endometriosis and adenomyosis, which affects 1.5 million women in Britain. In the lead-up to the debate, I spoke to campaigners including Michelle Dewar, who organised the petition. For her and many others, social media is a tool to spread awareness, educate and campaign. Indeed, it was on social media that Michelle was able to encourage signatures for the e-petition, which eventually led to the debate in Parliament.

Like many other women’s health conditions, endometriosis and adenomyosis face serious social stigma. Social media can offer the space to help overcome that, establishing support networks where women can connect and feel understood. However, the unrefined and blanket approaches that many social media platforms take to address broader online harms often lead to the suppression of women’s health content. That can include restrictions on certain words associated with women’s health, as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) referred to, and the banning of paid-for ads, including for women’s health and sexual wellbeing products.

This has real implications for women. It can seriously impact the reach of content online, reducing access to potentially lifesaving information or vital support networks. It also has economic implications; research by CensHERship indicates that 64% of women’s health businesses have experienced lost revenue as a result of these types of barrier. Once there is a shadow ban, it can be very difficult to resolve and can lead to loss of revenue and other long-term issues.

Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have failed to properly engage with the issue. There remains a lack of transparency about how shadow-banning operates. That is particularly concerning because although content around women’s menstrual and sexual health often faces removal, the same cannot be said for men’s health content and the language used to describe male bodies. We must join the calls by Essity and other campaign groups for meaningful action to change this. Cross-Government working groups to examine how platform moderation practices affect women’s access to health information, and alignment between the women’s health strategy and wider digital and online safety frameworks, can ensure that women’s access to health information is treated as a priority.

Women must be allowed to own the narrative around their own bodies. It is therefore time to ban the ban.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) for securing this important debate.

Getting accurate health information is essential, and it is a fact that most people go online to get it. Some 48% of UK adults have used online health information, including from social media, to self-diagnose at least once in a year, according to a 2024 study by AXA. The same study found that 30% of young adults have turned to social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram to access health information.

Machine-learning tools such as ChatGPT are now, according to a 2026 study by AXA, the first source for symptom-checking for 36% of people—twice the number who would first go to the NHS website. That is worrying in and of itself, given how entirely inaccurate machine-learning tools such as ChatGPT can be. They do not necessarily give accurate information; what they do is build plausible sentences, but that is a debate for another day.

We have already heard how medically accurate women’s health information is being systematically removed or downgraded by the algorithm. This is also known as shadow-banning. Content creators quite often do not know that it is even happening. We have also seen products removed from sales platforms, including Amazon, with adverts or posts being blocked for using words such as “vagina”, “period”, “menopause”, “pregnancy” or “fertility”. At the same time, adverts for erectile dysfunction or testosterone products remain visible. That is just one example. Advertisements for at-home fertility testing kits were automatically rejected by Amazon because they contained the word “vagina”, although the word “semen” was allowed. For context, the word “vagina” was contained in safety advice that said, “It’s not safe for you to use this product if you’ve had vaginal or cervical surgery within the last three months.” That is a safety implication, never mind anything else.

A recurring pattern in reports and research is that algorithms and moderation systems appear to interpret women’s anatomy and women’s reproductive language as adult or sexual in nature, in a way that comparable men’s health content simply is not. A vacuum of information is being created by medically accurate language being removed or downgraded. What happens in this vacuum? What fills this vacuum? Misinformation.

Unfortunately, the health and wellbeing advice online is quite often entirely without scientific basis. It often appeals to language like “natural”, “gentle” or “traditional”, or uses the accurate chemical names of everyday products or food to make them sound scary or unhealthy. That is easy to do. Take the chemical dihydrogen monoxide. That sounds like a very scary chemical, doesn’t it? That is water. It is easy to make things sound unhealthy and unsafe.

We see this pattern again and again: good, anatomically and medically accurate information is buried while nonsense is peddled by grifters—sorry, “influencers”—who usually have their own supplements to sell, funnily enough, or are being paid to promote things that they simply do not understand. The shadow-banning of certain words—the removal of anatomically accurate terms—means that content providers who do know what they are talking about, such as medics and scientists, are drowned out. As a result, women are left with a sea of misinformation, bad advice and often poor health.

What should we do about it? I recognise that some of these problems can come as an inadvertent and unintended consequence of important action to make online spaces safer, particularly for children. But children are not harmed by hearing medically accurate words or understanding how adult bodies work. As a parent, I make a point of using the correct anatomical terms. I am not going to lie: occasionally that has led to a bit of public embarrassment, especially when you have toddlers, but it means that my kids can now understand and find information about their own bodies.

I ask that social media and online sales platforms work with campaigners and Government to figure out how to keep people safe online while not restricting vital, medically accurate content. That work needs to be done across different Departments, and it needs to include regulators. We need to align the very welcome women’s health strategy with wider digital online safety frameworks so that women’s access to accurate health information is treated as a shared priority.

We need to find successful ways to disseminate valid, scientifically based women’s health information. That would involve the active testing of possible solutions, such as trusted expert accreditation, co-designed with clinicians, women’s health organisations and the platforms themselves. There is wider work to do on general health and scientific literacy in the population and the content creator space. I am sure that many of the people peddling nonsense do not know what they are doing because they do not have the critical thinking skills or the simple baseline knowledge to know what it is that they are selling.

In conclusion, women must be able to get medically and scientifically accurate information about their health—and we must work together to deliver it.

I apologise for running late, Mr Stringer; I had an emergency constituent issue.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) not only for securing this vital debate on the censorship of women’s health and wellbeing content online, but for her ongoing campaigning on this issue. I was delighted to join her roundtable on the subject with Essity. We need strong voices in this place and, my word, I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s strong voice on this issue.

We are here to talk about women’s health, so I will focus on that, but I want to make it clear that we are all fierce advocates for men’s health as well. It is clear that women’s health is being pushed to the edges of the internet by systems that fail to distinguish between pornography and public health. Posts about periods, endometriosis, fertility, pregnancy loss, pelvic pain and menopause—ordinary facts about ordinary bodies—are down-ranked, age-gated or quietly buried, while explicit content remains only a tap away. This is not a harmless quirk: it reflects design choices made by tech companies, often heavily influenced by men, the male lens and the male view of the world.

As founder of Labour: Women in Tech, I have been campaigning for years to get more women into the industry and creating tech that is made to serve more people. More recently, I have launched a campaign for age-appropriate, inclusive and lifelong sex education with Cindy Gallop of MakeLoveNotPorn and the MakeLoveNotPorn Academy, a platform for creating the Google of sex education. Talking of tech, I know she is watching this debate live online—so hello, Cindy Gallop.

We want to take the shame, guilt and embarrassment—all of which are perpetuated by shadow banning—out of talking about sex. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) mentioned some embarrassing things that can happen in public, and she is a fierce advocate for giving parts of the body their proper anatomical names.

I will focus on the huge role that sexual wellbeing plays in our health and happiness. We cannot rest on our laurels and assume that everyone had relationships and sex education in school. In fact, completing formal education at 16—RSE is not mandatory to 18—does not mean that the relationships and sex education provided to a student was adequate. A recent Youth Select Committee report found that relationships and sex education in UK schools is woefully lacking, particularly for LGBTQ young people. Like many adults, young people therefore turn to the internet and social media to fill the gaps.

When the online classroom censors the syllabus, we fail people twice: first by not teaching them enough, and then by hiding the very information they seek. These failures play out across a lifetime. After cancer treatment, for example, a woman may experience significant changes, such as early menopause, pain, vaginal dryness and changes in desire. She may look for practical, compassionate advice, but find it flagged as “sexual content”. That delivers not support but silence.

When it comes to pregnancy and the months after birth, evidence-based guidance on pelvic floor recovery or painful sex is frequently hidden behind warnings, while myths about “bouncing back” flow freely, leaving new mothers to stitch together care in the dark. Content on perimenopause and the menopause, an experience that will touch half the population, explaining brain fog, joint pain, dyspareunia—genital pain before, during or after sex—and the role of hormone replacement therapy is throttled by filters that bury the very help that women need.

Censorship compounds existing inequalities. Disabled people receive very little support around having a healthy sex life. Even straightforward, evidence-based facts about masturbation helping some people to relieve menstrual cramps are too often treated as indecent rather than educational. On top of that, creators and clinicians feel compelled to contort language to avoid suppression, writing “seggs” instead of “sex”, or “b00bs” instead of “breasts”. This is not merely absurd; for some neurodivergent people, misspelled language is confusing and exclusionary, making essential health information harder to understand and access.

We should also acknowledge the pressures on the very people trying to provide education. Some sex educators on mainstream platforms, especially TikTok and Instagram, feel forced to use coded or alternative language to get any reach at all.

Milly Evans, who has nearly half a million followers on TikTok, told me she never knows what rules might be imposed from one day to the next. She has had her account suspended; had stretches where algorithms would allow her to reach only existing followers, therefore not expanding her reach; and had periods of outright shadow banning, meaning that no one saw what she posted. When educators must choose between clarity and visibility, the public loses. This is especially true for those who rely on free, accessible information.

There is a gendered double standard that we must confront: women are penalised for posting clinically accurate information that men can share with far fewer consequences. Cindy Gallop’s “Fairness in the Feed” campaign on LinkedIn highlighted this starkly, with women who changed their profile gender to male seeing their posts reach further. When the same message travels differently depending on who says it, bias is no longer incidental: it is embedded in the system. Of course, LinkedIn denies it, but I say look at the actions, not the words.

The knock-on effects are not only personal but are economic. Women’s health companies, start-ups, clinics, apps and retailers struggle to reach the very people they exist to serve because their content and advertising are throttled. Lucy Litwack is the owner and CEO of Coco de Mer, a company that helps women with desire and sexual pleasure, which are central to health and wellbeing. She said that she cannot even run promotions for her lingerie on Facebook because her company also happens to sell sex toys. That is not just a ban on the promotion of sex toys, which is questionable in itself—I do not see why that should be banned—but a blanket block on lingerie because of association.

If responsible brands cannot speak to consenting adults about lawful products, innovation is chilled and growth is starved. The founders then walk into investor rooms and are told, “Sorry, your reach is too small and your traction is too thin.” The system is creating problems and then punishing those who try to solve them.

Shadow banning is especially corrosive because it is deniable. There is no clear refusal, only diminishing visibility, fewer views and a creeping signal that plain speech about women’s bodies is unwelcome. The predictable result is self-censorship: creators soften terms, clinicians dilute clarity, charities tiptoe, and the space left in respect of accuracy is quickly filled by misinformation and predatory products.

All that is why, alongside Cindy, I have launched a public consultation alongside our campaign for lifelong sex education. It is not a fixed blueprint but a genuine invitation for contributors to share their evidence and lived experience. We are asking people to tell us what is working well, what needs to change and where they would like the agenda to land.

In the spirit of listening, I will outline some ideas that people might suggest we explore together. People might call for greater transparency from and due process for platforms, including through clear rules for sexual and reproductive health content. That would mean having explanations when posts are limited and timely, and human-reviewed appeals so that educational material is not swept up by blunt filters and biased enforcement.

People might propose a mechanism to recognise verified educational and clinical content, thereby allowing NHS bodies, registered charities and qualified clinicians to label health education so that it is not misclassified as adult content, while still meeting robust safety standards.

People might ask for independent scrutiny and measurement so that we can track the visibility of sexual health content for women and men, LGBTQ communities, neurodivergent people and disabled people. That would allow us to compare enforcement patterns across genders and communities, audit algorithms and training data for bias, test whether changes actually help people to find the information that they need, and help responsible women’s health companies and educators to reach them.

People might also recommend partnerships that place trusted resources where people already are, such as GP surgeries, workplaces, community centres, schools and the large public platforms. That would make accurate guidance available at key life stages such as puberty, when making decisions about consent and contraception, pregnancy and postpartum recovery, illness and treatment, and the menopause transition.

What I have outlined are not conclusions; they are suggestions. They are invitations to shape a programme that is built with the public, rather than being handed down to them. Yet whatever solutions emerge will succeed only if the channels that carry our information stop choking on the words that we need to use.

Censorship by algorithm is still censorship, and when it hides women’s health, it harms half the country—quietly, cumulatively and needlessly. We should not accept an internet where it is easier to encounter pornography than to find clinically sound advice about pelvic pain, menopause, cancer recovery or accessible sexual wellbeing for disabled or neurodivergent people. We should not accept rules that police women’s language while allowing men to say the same things more frequently, nor a market that punishes health founders and educators for trying to solve the very problems that the system creates.

The consultation is open and we want people to share what already works, identify the gaps and point us to changes that would make the greatest difference. Together, we can bring women’s health out of the algorithmic shadows and into the light.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) on securing this timely and important debate, and I thank the hon. Members for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee), for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), for Colne Valley (Paul Davies), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) and for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) for their contributions.

Women’s health has been under-represented, under- discussed and under-researched throughout human history. As a result, women in my constituency, across the country and around the world are suffering needlessly. We are here today to discuss and highlight the fact that the online world has not changed that for the better, and that there is evidence that social media and tech giants are censoring women’s health issues, while men’s issues seem to be posted, shared and discussed with relative ease. That doubles down on centuries of health inequality, and it needs to stop.

There is, of course, a balance to be struck in identifying what is and is not appropriate to be shared with an increasingly wide audience online and on social media platforms—indeed, there is an active and growing discussion of that issue—but the censoring of accurate and lifesaving health information or of the promotion of effective products cannot be allowed. Social media companies are systematically censoring content relating to menstruation, fertility, menopause and postpartum recovery by classifying it as adult content.

At the same time, algorithms continue to push extreme material every single day. Violence, misogyny and racism proliferate online with alarming ease, yet educational and medical content about women’s bodies is apparently where tech companies choose to draw the line.

Meta introduced new health advertising categories earlier this year and rolled out additional restrictions designed to prevent advertisers from sharing what it classifies as sensitive health data. In practice, that has led many femtech and women’s health companies to claim that they are being disproportionately censored. We have seen reports of adverts for egg testing being removed, while sperm testing adverts remain. Educational posts are taken down for using medically accurate language. Charities such as Tommy’s have reportedly had research content flagged as inappropriate simply for containing the word “vagina”.

A 2023 campaign by Bodyform highlighted more than 40 banned or restricted words, including “cervix”, “PCOS”, “infertility” and “menopause”. That is shocking and idiotic. Words associated with normal biological functions and serious medical conditions are being treated as taboo.

The campaign group CensHERship found that 95% of women’s health creators experienced censorship in the past year, and more than half said that they now self-censor their own language to avoid having content removed. That should concern us all. The Removing or restricting medical and educational information does not protect people from dangerous content; it limits discussion and learning on subjects that are already not talked about enough, and the consequences are serious.

Medical misogyny, systematic under-research and poor education around women’s health are already deeply embedded in society. Only about 2% of UK public research funding is spent on female reproductive health. Against that backdrop, unnecessary restrictions risk further exacerbating inequalities and leaving women and girls without access to information that could genuinely improve and, in some cases, save their lives.

It is frankly ridiculous that women are increasingly forced to use euphemisms online to discuss medically accurate terms such as “vagina”, to avoid censorship. What message does that send to young women and girls? What message does that send to our children? I grew up in the ’90s—in an age when talking about women’s heath was too often shameful and euphemisms were normal. I remember TV adverts extoling the possibilities of rollerblading along a California beach in hot pants, and mystery blue liquids were used to demonstrate the absorbent qualities of the latest sanitary towel.

Things have changed. I have noticed that my local supermarket no longer has the obscurely named “feminine hygiene” aisle, and that the blue liquid on TV adverts is now red. Things have got better in the last 30 years, but the internet is the not-so-new frontier where we must continue to make the case that these subjects are not shameful and that women should not feel embarrassed about their own bodies and health. Shame and stigma stop women from coming forward with their problems, which delays diagnoses and worsens outcomes, as when patients present later the consequences can be devastating.

Of course, there are legitimate concerns about medical misinformation online, and the Government must absolutely continue to tackle harmful information, but the systematic restriction of women’s health content is not the answer. Social media and the internet are now central conduits of knowledge and learning, particularly for younger generations. They have enormous untapped potential as tools for public health education and awareness.

I am afraid the Government’s recent women’s health strategy was a missed opportunity to begin to address the issue, but at the very least the Government should bring tech companies, campaigners, clinicians and women’s health organisations around the table to establish a workable and transparent solution. Women should not have to fight algorithms simply to access accurate health information, and in 2026 medically accurate discussions about women’s bodies should not be treated as inappropriate, shameful or obscene. It is time for us to stop allowing technology to reinforce existing inequality, and instead use it as a force for good.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. As we are discussing health, I should declare that I am a former NHS doctor and my wife is an NHS doctor.

I thank the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) for her detailed and highly researched speech, as well as all other Members who have spoken. This has been a most concerning debate in relation to the systemic impact of health promotion, and it has thrown up bigger, more fundamental challenges that we, as a society, must start to grapple with. I will come to that later in my remarks.

My first job in the psychiatric training scheme—and my first consultant job—was on a women’s ward in south-east London. That was one of the most amazing jobs I have ever done: looking after very poorly women and doing my bit to deal with complex physical health issues and to promote women’s health. I totally appreciate and agree about the importance of reducing what is—let us face it—ridiculous stigma and social taboo around women’s health issues, but I come at this as a doctor, so I have a particular perspective.

Equally, I am mindful that my perspective—how I look at society—has changed during my 44 years. If someone had asked the Ben of 20 years ago, “Do you think we live in a society that is equal for men and women?” he would have said, “Yes, of course we do.” In the past 15 years, I have come to know that that is completely wrong, things are nowhere near where they should be and we still have a huge amount of work to do. Sadly, what we have heard in this debate, and the list of de-promoted words that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central handed to me, are further evidence of the challenges that we must tackle. She is 100% right to raise this topic, among others, and to call out what has been happening.

But—and there is a “but”—this issue is not simply about access to information. This is not just a question of whether the information should or should not be accessible—in my view, it absolutely should be—or of how to determine the threshold between adult content and factual material. The debate also relates to decisions made by private companies to impose limits on what they permit or promote on their sites. That is the nub of the issue: should companies be allowed to make those decisions, or should it be the role of Government to regulate those choices or actions?

To be clear, I do not believe that this debate is about the scope of the Online Safety Act, which does not restrict companies in the publication of factual health information. At no point does that Act says that information on breasts, vaginas, fertility, menstruation or menopause, or on any other body part, condition or medical term, should be restricted or classified as adult material. The way that that information or imagery is presented may indeed come within the scope of the Act, but its existence does not. Inappropriate adult content should not be accessible to children—that is right—but factual and educational material should not meet that criterion. It is also worth bearing in mind that, in some ways, this is not a new issue. I am sure that, just as people looked at information in anatomy textbooks for educational purposes before the internet, plenty of people looked at it for other purposes—but, again, that is not a matter for Parliament or the Online Safety Act.

Under our current legal framework, private companies have the right to choose what information they permit on their websites. That is a commercial decision, and if we are not happy with such a decision—my very strong view is that we should not support the restriction of information relating to women’s health—we should call them out and persuade them to change their position. Algorithmic transparency is important, but it is also critical, given the evidence that we have heard in this debate, that companies are not able to hide behind the Online Safety Act.

A bigger problem that we will have to tackle or process at some point is the status of social media in our society. Is it private or is it something bigger? Should it be regulated, like news outlets? That would be a huge change in our position, creating such regulatory burdens as to make the UK wholly uncompetitive in the market and having an extreme impact on people’s access to information. It would also be counterproductive, because it is nigh-on impossible to do.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister, whom I welcome to his place. This is the first time I have had the pleasure of being opposite him at the Dispatch Box. I reiterate the Opposition’s strong support for what Members from both sides of the House have said about the importance of destigmatising these matters. I hate even using the word “destigmatise” because I worry that that is stigmatising in itself—it is ridiculous, in some ways, that we have to have this debate in the modern age, but we are where we are. We must ensure that everyone has access to sensible and appropriate information, without the biases that have been mentioned in the debate.

Finally, as a former NHS mental health doctor, I point out that social media is not the only online source of health information. I signpost people who have questions to the NHS website, where there is plenty of stuff on all health areas—I looked it up on my phone during the debate. We do not have to rely on big-tech social media; we have plenty of services in which other information is available.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) for securing this debate, and all Members who have spoken.

As ever, my hon. Friend made a powerful and compelling argument. She is a compelling advocate for the people she argues for and the case she makes. That is met with deep appreciation and understanding. I think I understand most of the very helpful list that she provided, which I have handed to my officials, but I do not know whether I can pronounce every word on it. She made her point brilliantly, as did so many Members in their own speeches. My hon. Friend is right to challenge platforms that arbitrarily remove legal health content or engage in the practice of shadow-banning people, particularly where people struggle to appeal those unfair decisions.

I will set out the Government’s position clearly. First, we believe it is crucial that every woman and girl can access trusted health information online. Secondly, the Online Safety Act does not prevent adults or children from accessing legal content about women’s health. Thirdly, the Online Safety Act will require the largest user-to-user platforms—designated by Ofcom as category 1 services—to have clear, accessible terms of service. Those must explain what legal content for adults they do and do not allow, and when a user may be banned or suspended. Category 1 services will also need effective routes for users to challenge content being wrongly taken down. Their complaints processes must be clearly set out in their terms of service, and platforms will be expected to act appropriately when complaints are made.

Ofcom is due to publish the register of categorised services in July of this year, alongside a consultation on these additional duties, including strengthened terms of service requirements. Ofcom will consult over the summer and aims to publish final policy statements and guidance in 2027. Once those duties are in force, the largest platforms will have much clearer and stronger appeal mechanisms, and expectations on them, for users whose content has been removed inappropriately. Ofcom will be required to send out annual notices to categorised services, which may require them to disclose information about the design and operation of their algorithms.

As the online safety regulator, Ofcom published guidance in November 2025 setting out practical steps that technology firms can take to make their platforms a safer and more inclusive place for women and girls online. The guidance is clear that safeguards for freedom of expression must remain in place, including routes for users to challenge wrongly moderated content. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is working closely with Ofcom to support the effective implementation of those measures.

In March 2026, the Secretary of State held a roundtable with social media firms and set clear expectations that firms should implement Ofcom’s guidance by the end of this year. I hear the call from the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) for a repeat roundtable with all parties, and I absolutely agree that that is a way forward. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), is absolutely right to say that this is about dialogue first—we agree on that. Where required, we must call out, but calling in is a good start.

The Online Safety Act also requires Ofcom to raise awareness and understanding of misinformation and harmful content, especially when vulnerable groups are affected. As part of that requirement, Ofcom must publish a media literacy strategy every three years. The first focuses on research, evidence and evaluation, and on engaging with platforms, people and partnerships, which includes the delivery of targeted media literacy interventions for priority groups.

DSIT is ensuring a more joined-up approach to media literacy across Government, aligning policy, education and communications. We are working to ensure that every person can access trusted health information online. That is why our media literacy action plan, published in March this year, highlights the central role that online sources play in helping people to learn about important topics such as health. It is also aimed at supporting parents in building their children’s resilience to the creeping-in of misleading content.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology continues to work with the Department of Health and Social Care on ensuring that people have access to safe and trusted health information online. Social media companies must realise the role that they play in women and girls accessing accurate information about their health. The Government agree that social media companies must do more to enable women and girls to access accurate health information.

Ofcom has set out clear guidance on what companies must do to make the online world a safer and more inclusive place for women, and the Government have been clear that platforms need to implement this guidance by year-end. The Online Safety Act does not prevent adults or children from accessing legal content about women’s health. Safeguards for freedom of expression are built into the framework of the Act, which places duties on platforms to protect users’ right to freedom of expression when introducing safety measures.

The largest services regulated by the Act will have additional duties: they cannot arbitrarily remove content; they must be clear what content is acceptable for their adult users; and they must enforce the rules consistently. Users will have access to effective complaints procedures to appeal when content is unduly taken down.

On the specific points that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central raised about the Eve Appeal’s letter, the Government acknowledge that censorship of terms and diagrams relating to women’s anatomy is a problem, especially when such material can help to increase awareness about the spread and risk of cancer. In April 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care published a renewed health strategy. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) is no longer in his place, but I commend him for the work he did on that strategy and for the powerful statement of intent that it is a Government priority, alongside the strategy to halve violence against women and girls in this Parliament.

The strategy represents a decisive shift towards addressing long-standing failings in women’s health outcomes, experiences and access to care. It applies the Government’s 10-year health plan to women’s health, aiming for faster and more equitable improvements through fundamental reform rather than incremental changes. It aims to tackle medical misogyny and rebalance power within the healthcare system, to ensure that women’s voices and choices are prioritised.

Central to the strategy is improving women’s and girls’ awareness of and access to services, and driving research that will benefit women’s health. Alongside this, the strategy recognises the need to tackle misinformation about women’s healthcare. That is why it focuses on making credible health information easy to find.

I will now address a few specific issues mentioned in today’s debate. The renewed women’s health strategy has committed to invest £1.5 million in femtech, via the femtech healthcare challenge. Health information is critical. The sophisticated algorithms that we all experience as they target us with adverts should—indeed, must—be used to identify health-based information to ensure that women and children do not miss out on crucial health information.

The role of the NHS social media team is to make credible health information easy to find, understand and trust, in the places where people already spend their time. It is using channels such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to explain topics including menstrual health, contraception and conditions such as endometriosis. The team also uses audience insight and social listening to understand how people talk about these topics, what they are worried about and where they have gaps in their understanding. That helps us to make content that is clearer, more empathetic and genuinely useful.

Finally, the Government agree that platforms need to do more to address how they moderate content. We will continue to engage closely with platforms and with Ofcom to understand better how enforcement is being conducted. We all agree that we want to see women and girls being able to access trusted health information, and we must remain vigilant on this issue.

I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central for securing this critical debate.

I thank everyone who joined us for the debate. As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) said, it is one that we needed to have because so many people do not know about this issue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) for reaffirming that this Government recognise medical misogyny.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for reminding us about health advice. We both participated in a debate about endometriosis and adenomyosis not too long ago. In that debate, I said that periods can be uncomfortable but should not be painful, and Members from across the House came up to me afterwards to ask, “Is that true?” Yes, it is true. Periods should not be painful. That shows how we all lack advice on women’s health.

My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) talked about her children creating embarrassing situations, which I recognise, too. My daughter had a conversation with her friend at the school gates, alongside many other mums and school- children, about her favourite word. She declared, very proudly, that “vulva” was her favourite word. She had learned it at school as appropriate. She knew the difference and told me proudly that I must not misuse “vagina” for “vulva”.

That raises an important point about child abuse, which is a little outside the scope of this debate, but not entirely, because we have to use the correct terms. Police find it extremely frustrating, and it does not meet legal thresholds, when children say, “He touched my cookie,” or, “He touched my ginny.” They need the child to say the right word in order to proceed, and it is another angle in this debate that we must not forget. Using the correct medical terminology allows us to crack down on paedophiles and groomers.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), whose embarrassment threshold is even lower than mine, which is hard, talked about important post-birth advice and how shadow-banning is particularly problematic because it is deniable. What it says to women, doctors, gynaecologists and femtech entrepreneurs is, “You are just creating content that is not interesting. That is why it does not do well.” Actually, they are creating content that is being deliberately suppressed.

I appreciate what the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), said about the difference between this and adult content, violent misogyny and racist language. All of that is allowed, yet these terms are not. It shows the power that these platforms have: they say that they cannot suppress these words, but they can. Terms like “rape” or horrible terms that are racist, antisemitic or anti-Islam could be in the same position as women’s health terms, yet they choose for them not to be. I loved her mention of blue liquid. We all remember the blue liquid, and we all remember being surprised, if we were told beforehand, when it was not blue liquid. I imagine that many men were quite surprised, when they got married or entered a relationship, to find that it was not blue. And we certainly were not all out rollerblading.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, asked an important question: should Government dictate what platforms publish? He is right, and the OSA does not say that women’s health information cannot be published. Where I have a bit of an issue with his argument is that, although he is right that it is a commercial decision, it is also a commercial decision that allows the platforms to continue to push pornography, violent material and misogynistic material. If they want to make money off people in this country, we need to make sure they are not doing damage to this country.

I appreciate where the hon. Lady is coming from, but unless I am wrong, those examples are all within the auspices of the OSA.

Yes, they would be. I am trying to say that the OSA does not limit this, but it does limit some of the other material. It is important that there is a place for the Government to say what platforms should or should not be able to publish, but they should not micromanage. I agree on that. It should not be like the Lord Chamberlain saying, “Here are the words that you are allowed to use”, or, “The Queen does not approve of those phrases”, but we should be clear that we limit free speech where it has a real, negative impact on individuals or on society, and that we are protecting people because of their age, gender or other protected characteristics.

The shadow Minister raised an important discussion about publishers, plurality and biases that are already in the system. The systems are designed by men and the content, for the most part, focuses on men—not completely, but the algorithms are traditionally designed by men and therefore feed what they think men want, or not even what they want, but what will keep them on the platform the longest. That is their business model.

I appreciate the Minister reiterating the Government’s position that we believe that women should have access to accurate medical information. There are two sides to that: making sure that we suppress inaccurate medical information; and making sure that we have the mechanisms to show what is medically accurate with a tick. We should then make sure that that is the material that people see.

I appreciate what you said about appeal mechanisms, but it is difficult to appeal against shadow-banning, so we need to talk further about that. Again, that is about transparency on algorithms, which you were talking about, and about our dialogue with social media platforms. We need to ask them, what is more damaging? Is it the sexualised content, the misogynistic content or the health advice? We need to have that serious discussion with them.

We also need to think much wider than the four big social media companies. That is not always where people go for such advice. We have heard of experiences on LinkedIn and many other platforms that show that this is a widespread issue. Finally, you are absolutely right about media literacy, so that we know what is good health content and what is based on rubbish science. That is part of how we get through this. [Interruption.] I thank everyone for attending.

I did not want to interrupt the hon. Lady in what has been an interesting debate, but I remind hon. Members that if you say “you”, that is me—

You are absolutely right, Mr Stringer. I apologise.

I did not want to interrupt the debate, but it is worth remembering for future debates.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the censorship of women’s health and wellbeing content online.