"My hon. Friend is right. The whole point of mesh is that it is designed to induce scar tissue in order to fuse the mesh with the muscle, and therefore trying to excise the mesh is incredibly difficult. That is why there are partial removals and some women are left …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"It absolutely is not acceptable. I hope that the Minister is not going to repeat what other Ministers have said in written statements and in this place, which is that 1% to 3% is the sort of failure rate, or complication rate, that one would expect with all sorts of …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"Yes. We have heard that many women have this undertaken in private clinics—perhaps half of them, although we do not know how many that means. Those clinics advertise success rates very widely; we can find it all over the internet. The fact that this is described as mesh, sling, tape …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his kind remarks. Would he be surprised to learn that the chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, speaking alongside the Health Secretary in a Facebook Live broadcast just a few months ago, said that she thought the serious complication …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly interesting point. Does he agree that it is inexplicable that NICE continues to say that it cannot produce its new guidance until the spring of 2019, when we and the medical fraternity have been asking for it for the past two years?..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"Does the hon. Lady agree that part of the problem is that mesh was marketed so widely as being a quick fix? Previously, far more expert urogynaecological surgeons would have undertaken what was far more difficult and invasive surgery—colposuspension or autologous sling. When it went to day-case surgery and, effectively, …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"I am not sure that that answer is correct, in as much as we know that there is no new clinical evidence to be produced in this area; there are no outstanding trials. Therefore, there is no reasonable reason why NICE cannot bring forward that guidance, and it certainly does …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"That is very interesting. I do not believe I have received a letter from the chief medical officer explaining that she got the statistics wrong. May I press the Minister to make sure that when the CMO looks at the register she offers a proper narrative analysis of what the …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"This is an important debate for me and for so many hon. Members because of what our constituents are telling us. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) for giving voice, with great eloquence and passion, to an issue …..." Owen Smith - View Speech
"I do not intend to take too long, because I am mindful of the fact that the motion refers largely to NHS England, but I am goaded to speak by the repeated references by the current Secretary of State, the previous Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister to the …..." Owen Smith - View Speech