Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review report First Do No Harm, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing redress separately to the Patient Reference Group to support people harmed by Valproate.

The Government is currently making a thorough assessment of recommendation 4 of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (IMMDS Review), which relates to individual redress schemes, for sodium valproate, primodos and vaginal mesh. We will be responding in full later in 2021.

The purpose of the Patient Reference Group, which was part of recommendation 9 of the Review, is to ensure that patient voices are heard as we move towards the full response. It will look at implementation of the IMMDS Review as a whole.