Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Nadine Dorries

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

In the Department of Health and Social Care, we work daily and continually on improving patient safety to make our NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. Procedures such as the national guardian scheme, which my hon. Friend mentioned, and others that have been put in place all work towards that goal. This report, as tragic and harrowing as the stories in it are, will go a long way towards enabling us to develop systems that enable the patient’s voice to be heard earlier.

That is the core issue. The thread that runs through is how long it takes somebody who has a complaint to have their voice heard and their complaint acted on. That is something that we need to resolve. If we can do that—if patients’ complaints can be heard and can be resolved as soon as they are raised—no Minister will, hopefully, ever have to come to the Dispatch Box in the future, because situations will have been dealt with effectively and promptly, and lessons will have been learned.

My hon. Friend will also be aware that we have introduced the Health Service Safety Investigations Body, and there are other measures that will help us to take the learning from incidents and move forward. Work therefore happens daily on improving patient safety and getting to the place he outlined, where a Minister will never have to come here and apologise again.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister for her statement today. First, may I express my sincere gratitude to Baroness Cumberlege and the review team, who have shown such empathy and understanding to patients, their families and campaigners who have campaigned tirelessly on these issues for years? My mam is one of the thousands of patients who had her life and her health ruined because of this quick fix with a bit of tape. She was never warned of the damage that this plastic mesh could cause her body.

The review recommends setting up a network of specialist centres to provide comprehensive treatment, care and advice for those affected by implanted mesh, and that is to be welcomed. Does the Minister agree, however, that it would be abhorrent for any of those centres to be led by any of the surgeons who promoted mesh or put it into women, knowing it damaged them? For some women, it has caused the most unimaginable pain and life-changing damage.

[Ms Dorries]

I thank my hon. Friend—I do regard her as a friend because she is such a principled campaigner on issues such as this. I hope she does not mind my saying that I know that her mother gave evidence to the review and went along to one of the hearings. I thank her for that, because it was a very brave step to take. This is not an easy thing to talk about, so that was incredibly brave of her. We owe her for her bravery in coming forward, and I thank the hon. Lady for mentioning that.

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. I cannot comment on the specific point about individual doctors with expertise because work has to go forward on removals of meshes and on where we go in the future. However, on specialist centres—I think she is aware of this—NHS England is assessing bids from NHS providers to become specialist centres and to provide treatment for women with complications from mesh inserted for urinary incontinence and vaginal prolapse. Following the covid-19 pandemic, during which some of this work has unfortunately been halted, every effort is now being made to finalise the centres quickly. Stakeholders will be kept up to date with progress, but we do want to see more of that work.