Breast Implants

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is right. When Sir Bruce and his colleagues are considering the establishment of a wider registry, they will consider not only the possibility of self-registration but the possibility of making clinical professionals responsible for the publication of such data. The responsibility should not rest solely on providers or manufacturers.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I understand that a number of private clinics will not even scan a patient with PIP implants without charging. However, these goods were counterfeit. They were not of a medical standard, and they could be injurious to health. Should not the NHS be prepared to help women who must be worried sick, and perhaps cannot even afford to have a scan to reassure them? I cannot believe that the NHS would turn its back on a patient who was suffering after drinking counterfeit vodka, so why should it turn its back on these patients?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady framed her question in that way, because I thought I had made it clear that the NHS would always be there to support women. We will seek to recover the cost to the NHS if the original provider was a private provider: that approach has been adopted for years, and I am sure that it would have been adopted by my predecessors. No woman should have to feel that she will not be looked after, but I am making a different point—namely that, in the first instance, women should be looked after by the original providers, who have a continuing duty of care. They also have legal obligations—as well as the moral obligations to which I have referred—but it is not for me to advise on those.