Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review — House of Commons, 2021-07-08
Topic: Health
Sharon Hodgson (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) for securing this very important debate. As we have heard, today marks one year since the independent medicines and medical devices safety review was published. I was speaking virtually that day and I have to say that I am thrilled to be able to speak in the Chamber today; thankfully, it is starting to feel a bit more normal. I wholeheartedly thank Baroness Cumberlege and her team for their excellent work; it is great to see her with us today. I also thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for commissioning the review in the first place. It was a brave and bold thing to do—and the right thing to do, as she has so often done in this place The problems with the medicines and medical devices that the review reports on—Primodos, valproate and vaginal mesh—have been ongoing for much, much longer than just the past year, as we all know. I have had the privilege of working with campaigners over many years on these issues; I pay tribute to Janet Williams, Emma Murphy, Marie Lyon and Kath Sansom, to name just four, for their dedication and expertise. They are normally with us for these debates, and it is sad that they are not able to be here I first spoke in this House about surgical mesh implants in October 2017, as shadow Minister for public health—there were always lots of debates in that brief, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) will know. My mam always likes to see my speeches, so one Saturday, while I was making lunch, I showed her that speech and said "Oh, thank goodness you’ve never had any of this awful mesh put in." That was when our world was turned upside down. She said, "No, no, I only had a bit of tape put in a few years ago, before all my troubles started"—the "troubles" she refers to being numerous health problems that appeared one after the other. She had had scans and cameras everywhere, with no diagnosis. Obviously there was no solution that could be found. Does that sound familiar to those who have had constituents with mesh problems get in touch Fast-forward three and a half years—coming up to four now—from that first debate, and my mam still has all sorts of complications. She is now in constant pain all the time. She is 76 this year. She has all sorts of autoimmune reactions and she just wants her mesh removed, no matter her age. She was very healthy and had a great life before, and her life now is a shadow of its former self. She wishes constantly, every day, that she had never had it put inside her She is not alone. I know that there are tens of thousands of women in exactly the same position, so I support all the recommendations of the excellent Cumberlege review. Recommendation 5 calls for specialist centres to be established, which is excellent; it has happened, they are open and I think some have actually started to do some of their work. But therein lies the issue that I want to specifically mention today—I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) have already raised it, so I am not alone in being concerned The issue is that the very surgeons who implanted this awful, life-devastating mesh are in most cases the very same ones now offering to remove it. As the right hon. Gentleman said, after gaslighting women and telling them that their pain was in their head or that they just had to learn to live with it—or to lie back and think of England when they tried to have sex, as was once mentioned in Westminster Hall—they are the very same surgeons these patients, including my mam, are expected to trust again to remove this mesh. That trust is, unsurprisingly, all gone.