Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh, published by the Patient Safety Commissioner on 7 February 2024, whether she has made an assessment of the potential implication for her policies of the provision of financial redress for people harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations and will respond substantively in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timetable is for making a decision on redress for people affected by mesh implants following the publication of The Hughes Report on 7 February 2024.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report, and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations, and will respond substantively in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her Department's planned timescale is for responding to the Patient Safety Commissioner's report entitled The Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh, published on 7 February 2024.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report, and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations, and will respond substantively in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the compensation scheme for people suffering from the effects of vaginal mesh operations does not cover all those impacted by the use of the same materials in rectopexy procedures.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report, and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh.

While the PSC does not include rectopexy mesh within her proposed definition of directly harmed patients for the purposes of her redress recommendations, we note that the PSC has said in her report that the Government needs to consider how to investigate issues related to harm caused by other uses of mesh going forward. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations, and will respond substantively in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his correspondence of 28 February 2024 to Kath Sansom and Ruth MacLeod of the Sling the Mesh Group, if he will publish (a) the patient groups that contributed to, (b) the distribution lists used to inform (i) patient groups and (ii) stakeholders about and (c) a summary of the contributions of patient groups to the consultation.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is in the process of drafting the response to the consultation on Disclosure of industry payments to the healthcare sector, which will be published in due course. As the consultation response is in policy development, the information requested is not available.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timetable is to respond to the Patient Safety Commissioner's report entitled Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh, published on 7 February 2024.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations and will respond substantively in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timetable is to respond to the Patient Safety Commissioner's report entitled Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh, published on 7 February 2024.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations and will respond substantively in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to respond to the report by the Patient Safety Commissioner entitled The Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh, published on 7 February 2024.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations and will respond substantively in due course.

Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, If she will make an assessment of the potential impact on women's health of the Government's progress on implementing the recommendations of the report of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review entitled First Do No Harm, published on 8 July 2020.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

Patient safety and women’s health is a top priority for this Government.

That’s why since the ‘First Do No Harm’ report we have:

o Appointed England’s first Patient Safety Commissioner

o Setup specialist centres for women impacted by mesh

o Piloted ways doctors can declare their interests

o And launched a national mandatory Medical Device Outcome Registry.

Beyond this, we published the first Women’s Health Strategy for England, which set out our plans for improving how the health and care system listens to women.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review report First Do No Harm, published on 8 July 2020, what discussions they have had regarding the provision of monetary compensation for people adversely affected by clinical and surgical pelvic mesh.

Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government has asked the Patient Safety Commissioner, Dr Henrietta Hughes, to undertake work looking at redress for people harmed by pelvic mesh and sodium valproate. The work is intended to focus on the views of those affected, improving the understanding of how many people have been affected and how, the case for redress and what form it could take.

The Patient Safety Commissioner office has stated that the report setting out the findings from this work is expected to be published on 7 February this year. The Government will consider the report’s findings before deciding how to proceed on this matter.

The Government published its response to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety review in July 2021, which did not accept the recommendation to establish a redress agency, this position remains unchanged.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what recent assessment they have made of the recommendation for an Independent Redress Agency in the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review report First Do No Harm, published on 8 July 2020.

Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government has asked the Patient Safety Commissioner, Dr Henrietta Hughes, to undertake work looking at redress for people harmed by pelvic mesh and sodium valproate. The work is intended to focus on the views of those affected, improving the understanding of how many people have been affected and how, the case for redress and what form it could take.

The Patient Safety Commissioner office has stated that the report setting out the findings from this work is expected to be published on 7 February this year. The Government will consider the report’s findings before deciding how to proceed on this matter.

The Government published its response to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety review in July 2021, which did not accept the recommendation to establish a redress agency, this position remains unchanged.

Found: • Some reports do not include the necessary information to determine the indication of use of the surgical

Information on polypropylene and polyester mesh and stitches clearly states the potential complications of their use and titanium protacks carry a cancer warning.

We understand mesh must be used in life or death situations, but we want to ensure that—

*mesh is only used when essential;
*patients have alternatives to mesh; and
*mesh is only used with the fully informed consent of the patient.

We want the use of mesh devices and stitches to be suspended while a review of all surgical procedures which implant any form of polyester, polypropylene or titanium products – for example hernia mesh, rectomesh, mesh used in hysterectomies – is carried out and guidelines for the use of surgical mesh are established.

We are also calling for suspension of the use of titanium protacks that are used with hernia mesh, as these carry a cancer warning.

While we recognise and support women with TVT or pelvic mesh implants, the mesh that we are talking about is not the same. It is put into the body differently and used for different purposes.

Found: Suspend all surgical mesh and fixation devices

Found: Cumberlege review of the hormonal pregnancy test Primodos, Sodium V alproate in pregnancy and transvaginal surgical

Found: Surgical mesh made of synthetic materials, such as polypropylene, can be found in knitted mesh or non-knitted

Found: Mesh Implants ________________________ 15 Timeline of Events in the Polypropylene Urogynecologic Surgical