Julia Frances Cumberlege, Baroness Cumberlege, is a British Conservative Party politician and businesswoman. She was created a life peer on 18 May 1990 as Baroness Cumberlege, of Newick in the County of East Sussex.
After her marriage in 1961 and raising her three sons, Cumberlege served in local government as a justice of the peace for East Sussex from 1973 to 1985, and a member of East Sussex County Council from 1974 to 1985. She was appointed CBE in 1985, and served as a Deputy Lieutenant of East Sussex from 1986 to 1991. As chair of a review team commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Security, Cumberlege produced a report in 1986 which, among other things, recommended that nurses should be able to prescribe some drugs. From 1987 to 1989, she was a member of the DHSS Expert Advisory Group on AIDS. In 1992 she was appointed a Junior Health Minister and for five years covered all health and social services matters in the House of Lords. She was also the Sponsor Minister for the city of Plymouth responsible for regeneration and a budget of £45 million per year. In 1997 she was Opposition Spokesperson for Health. In the House of Lords in 2000 on the subject of the Britain's National Health Service, remarking that "We are all trapped in a marvellously pure ideology, the ideal socialist dream", she advocated removing the requirement that the NHS be free at the point of use, replacing it with "an NHS insurance premium", and that "allowances could be made for those with private insurance and private expertise could be used". She also said that "The NHS ought not to exclude as a matter of principle the private sector" stating that "Competition is both a spur and a discipline". She said that "some might advocate putting a hospital or two under private management if only to prove that the Government can do it better." She later went on to say, "I am not advocating privatising the NHS. An undiluted private health insurance scheme is not the answer. With current schemes, so much seems to be excluded. And just when the need is greatest the premiums become unaffordable." In 2006–07, Cumberlege chaired a commission reviewing the approach of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to child protection. In 2010 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal College of Nursing. She conducted a review of maternity services for NHS England in 2015. Better Births, the report of the review, recommended that all women should have the choice to give birth where they want, with the support of the same midwife throughout pregnancy, labour and the early weeks of motherhood, with control over a personal maternity care budget of £3,000 to be spent on the NHS care they choose. In February 2018, she was appointed by the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to chair the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Security Review, investigating reports from women patients about harmful side effects from medicines and medical devices, and how the health service had responded. The Review was reported in July 2020. It dealt with oral pregnancy test Primodos, anti-epilepsy drug sodium valproate and pelvic mesh repairs. The Review described "a culture of denial, institutional resistance to responding to safety concerns, and an absence of accountability".
Business ventures
In 2001 she launched Cumberlege Connections Ltd.; this became Cumberlege Eden and Partners in 2013. These companies specialized in health sector training and consultancy.
