Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but I am afraid, although she is highlighting an immensely important matter, and one that she has highlighted before, she has not asked a question—[Interruption.] Order. She has reached her limit and that is it. I have told her, as I have other Members. I have lost count of the number of times Members have been told that if they have an urgent question, they can begin with a few observations—a sentence or two—in response to the Minister, and then questions must follow, but that is not what has happened. I have the highest respect for the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of and commitment to this subject, but she cannot speak for two minutes and then indicate, “I’m about to get to my questions.” Sorry, I say to her—[Interruption.] Order. No, sorry, but you have had your time. It is up to Members to stick to the limits, so other colleagues will now have to pursue this matter. I genuinely thank her for what she has said, but Members really must observe procedures. If I may say so, there has never been a more enthusiastic friend of the House than me in the granting of urgent questions, but Members must then follow the procedure. That is the situation. I call Anna Soubry.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I beg the right hon. Lady’s pardon. First, let us hear the Minister respond to the statement made by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). It was an important statement; it just did not contain a question.

[Steve Brine]

You are, indeed, a friend of the House, Mr Speaker.

I have the utmost respect for the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), with whom I have served on Select Committees, and I will try to help her out. I have seen some of her public criticisms in the past 24 hours. I know that she has been very consistent about this, but I am not just reading notes put before me; I am citing evidence from an expert working group. It really would come to something if Members suddenly started to second-guess expert, scientific and medical evidence. I am not just quoting what is before me. The review’s conclusions do not take away—I do not pretend for one minute that they do—from the very real suffering experienced by these families. This was a comprehensive, independent, scientific review of all the available evidence carried out by the best experts in a broad range of specialisms. Ministers are confident in the report and the review process, and the focus now must be on implementing the recommendations.

[Anna Soubry]

On Friday, two constituents came to my surgery to speak to me about exactly this. The mother had taken one of these pills and her daughter was born with deformities. This is not the Minister’s report—he is just giving his explanation and doing his job—but may I suggest that we have a proper Back-Bench debate in which we can exercise all these issues? With great respect to the working group, and having had some experience as a former public health Minister and knowing about contaminated blood, I am afraid to say that I smell something like a very large rat in all of this. I think that there have been cover-ups.

[Steve Brine]

I thank my right hon. Friend—one of my predecessors in this role—for her question. I appreciate that she will have met constituents who have been affected by this in her surgeries and that that must have been very difficult. The report’s conclusions do not detract from the suffering experienced by the families, and we recognise that the families may find those conclusions hard to accept. Birth defects occur naturally in up to four in every 100 babies, and the existence of a birth defect in a baby exposed to a medicine during pregnancy does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the medicine.

As for the question of any future parliamentary discussion of this subject, I suspect—in fact, I know—that my right hon. Friend is more than capable of seeking such opportunities.