Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I pay tribute to the work she has done and place on record my thanks to the all-party parliamentary group on hormone pregnancy tests, which is very ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who secured the debate. She demonstrated her passionate support for those affected by this great injustice that it has taken far too long to put right.

I would also like to mention the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests, led by the redoubtable Marie Lyon, whom we all know and have met, as well as our constituents who have been subject to the terrible effects of taking Primodos in their pregnancies. Both the APPG and the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests have campaigned tirelessly—this year marks a decade of the APPG—for countless families who have had their lives irrevocably changed by the impact of Primodos.

Locally, my constituent Marjorie Lancaster-Smith has long been an active campaigner within these groups and has shared with me at length the impact that Primodos has had on her family. Following the use of Primodos during Marjorie’s pregnancy, her daughter Tania has complex heart and intestinal problems, which she has had to live with her entire life. These have impacted both Tania and the family as a whole, and she has had several periods of severe ill health, operations and complications that have been life-threatening on several occasions. Both Marjorie and Tania are missing vital medical records—in fact, there are none at all for the first few years of Tania’s life or for Marjorie’s pregnancy. It is therefore very difficult to have definitive proof of exactly what happened to them. This is a convenient omission—that is all I am going to say.

This campaign has been incredibly trying for many families, as they have often felt sidelined and stonewalled at every turn as they pursue justice for their now grown-up children. However, as this debate and those attending it today demonstrate, they remain determined to win their campaign for answers and redress. As Marjorie movingly put it in one of our recent communications,

“Nevertheless while there is breath in my body, I will continue to support my daughter and all our members who struggle every day because of the damage caused by Primodos. It is an absolute disgrace that they have not received justice and that Bayer”—

the pharmaceutical company that manufactured this drug—

“and the Government think they can just walk away scot-free.”

In the three years since Baroness Cumberlege’s independent medicines and medical devices safety review reported, we have seen long overdue work undertaken to support those impacted by pelvic mesh and sodium valproate, including the development of redress schemes, but Primodos victims have had no action whatsoever—indeed, there has been total silence and avoidance. I echo the point made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead that as the legal process has now ended, what ended with it was the Government’s latest excuse for not pursuing some form of redress. I hope that the Minister is able to reassure us that that position has now changed.

As other Members have highlighted, the all-party parliamentary group has three clear asks of the Government, which I hope the Minister will address when she responds: first, that the sensible and necessary recommendations made in the independent medicines and medical devices safety review relating to Primodos be implemented, including the creation of a redress fund for the families affected; secondly, that there is an acknowledgment of and explanation for the present lack of implementation of those recommendations, because it has now been a long time—three years; and finally, the withdrawal of the highly disputed findings of the expert working group, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East talked about. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead has called those findings into question, and she explained in her contribution why she did that.

Families such as Marjorie’s are long overdue answers for this miscarriage of justice, and they are all desperate to ensure that no further families suffer the adverse consequences of medicines they take or medical devices they have been given by the NHS without having access to redress much more quickly. They have endured great suffering, and they will continue to experience that suffering as a product of the use of Primodos during pregnancy. That suffering cannot be diminished, and it is a tragedy that they have had to wait so long and been so neglected, and that they are now being stalled just when they thought that finally, after years of campaigning, their suffering and the adverse effects had been recognised. I call on the Government to build on the statements of previous Ministers and finally take action to implement the recommendations of the review in full—critically, including the consideration of a redress scheme specifically for Primodos-affected families.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) for securing the debate and all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in it. We cannot help but be moved by the many cases that have been brought forward this afternoon. This is the first time I have been able to speak either in this Chamber or in Westminster Hall on Primodos because, as many Members have said, there were legal proceedings that ended in May. The claimants had until 11 August to make an application for permission to appeal, which they did not do in that time, so today is my first opportunity since that legal action to speak on it. A second claim is being issued by those who believe that they were harmed by hormone pregnancy tests, against Bayer/Schering. That claim was stayed pending the outcome of the first case and, given that the first claim was struck out by the court, there are now discussions regarding the next steps with that claim. However, I am free to speak today on the issues that we have discussed in the debate.

I want to be clear, as a Minister who is responsible for patient safety, that the patient safety element is the most pressing and important part of my role. Baroness Cumberlege is also a constituent of mine, so hon. Members can be assured that she lobbies outside Parliament as well as inside.

Baroness Cumberlege conducted a review, and the Government have accepted and made progress on most of those recommendations. As has been said, an apology was issued by Government Ministers at the time when they responded to that report. We have appointed an independent Patient Safety Commissioner, and Henrietta Hughes is doing an outstanding job holding the Government to account.

I will touch on the issues around redress in just a moment. We have set up the mesh centres for those affected by pelvic mesh; I meet regularly with those female campaigners to hear their feedback on the effectiveness of those centres, and there is work going on to review that. The MHRA itself is revising its practice as a result of Baroness Cumberlege’s report.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I think the Minister for her generosity in giving way, but this sounds like a typical civil service-drafted speech, if I may say so, mentioning everything but the issue we are talking about. We are not talking about mesh; we are talking about Primodos, and we want to hear about redress. Can she now please address those points?

[Maria Caulfield]

I can show the hon. Lady my remarks—they are on the back of this paper, and I have been writing them down during this debate. I am only two minutes into my speech and I am addressing some of the points that were made. I will of course come on to Primodos as well.

It is important to recognise that we did take those issues in Baroness Cumberlege’s review seriously. We could not look at the issue around Primodos at that time because of the legal case, which I have touched on, but there have been some reviews. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) was here just before this debate. In his time as Minister for Life Sciences, he took the campaigns and the evidence around Primodos so seriously that he set up the expert review in 2014 to look at the evidence that was in place. I hear very loudly this afternoon some concerns about that expert working group and that maybe evidence was either misinterpreted or not looked at, but that expert working group did look at the evidence at that time and also issued a public call for evidence.