Vaginal Mesh Implants: Compensation

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on securing this short debate on this important and increasingly troubling subject. I also want to take this opportunity to recognise the extraordinary work my noble friend has done, first in making her report and secondly, for following it up in so many ways.

One of the features of this terrible saga that has horrified me most is the way in which the health service has responded. Too many women, in seeking help, have been met not with sympathy and care but with indifference, denial, defensiveness and arrogance from those whom they believed would help them.

This is not my area of expertise, but I have been drawn into it by the experience of someone very close to my family who has suffered intolerably, has been treated appallingly when she should have been helped and has had to fight to have her health issues addressed. Following a referral in November 2014, she underwent an operation to insert mesh in December 2016. Subsequently, the mesh from her bowel travelled from her rectum to her fallopian tubes and ovaries. She has had countless infections and suffered ongoing severe discomfort and pain.

She has been pushed from pillar to post and seen four different specialists in four different hospitals. One urologist at the Royal United Hospital in Bath declined to examine her physically, as apparently, he could see simply by looking at her that she was fine. He categorically said that she did not have bad mesh. Had he taken the trouble to undertake even a cursory examination, he would have found that the mesh had perforated her vaginal wall, but he did not bother. She subsequently had to endure four operations to remove the mesh, ending with a stoma, which has recently been reversed.

Her current consultant has described hers as one of the worst cases of mesh damage she has ever seen. As far back as March 2021, this woman received a letter from the medical director of the North Bristol NHS Trust, in which he described her care and went on to write:

“I am very sorry to tell you these factors suggest the LVMR”,


the operation she underwent,

“was not clinically indicated at the time of the surgery in December 2016. … Undergoing an operation that may not have been required … is considered harmful”.

He went on to say:

“I sincerely apologise on behalf of the North Bristol NHS Trust that your surgery was not clinically indicated. This is unacceptable and we are taking this situation extremely seriously”.


Apart from the physical pain and suffering, there are practical consequences to consider. She was a fit, active, extremely competent and positive woman with a full family life and a thriving career at the top of her profession. Her condition was so debilitating that she was forced to give up her job. She lost her career and has been unable to work since 2016. The financial consequences are that she has lost her home, her savings, and now lives on disability benefits. She therefore has no credit rating, which means that the landlords she relies upon regard her as an undesirable tenant. She is unlikely ever again to have a partner or a personal relationship. That, I am sure your Lordships will agree, is a pretty horrific list of life-changing consequences.

As the trust conceded in its letter in March 2021, three years ago,

“This is unacceptable and we are taking this situation extremely seriously”.


I do not know exactly what “taking this situation extremely seriously” means, but after a period of legal wrangling, this woman has been offered compensation of £25,000, less costs of £2,500. That is compensation for pain, suffering, five operations over eight years, loss of home and career and substantial and catastrophic financial loss, leading to a life on benefits. No reasonable person could possibly conclude that this is adequate redress.

We spent the summer in this House debating the compensation to be paid to the victims of the infected blood scandal, and we are all familiar with the appalling injustices of the Post Office scandal and the levels of compensation those victims are rightly due to receive. The Government said they had no plans to set up a compensation scheme for the victims of mesh implants, but in light of the damage that has been caused to what could be as many as 25,000 women—it may be fewer, it may be more; we are going to hear from the Minister—and with the examples of the infected blood scandal and the Post Office scandal, I hope the Minister will tell us that the Government will revisit the decision not to set up a compensation scheme and will be able to tell us today how they plan to compensate these women, and within what timeframe.