Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh

Debate between Graham Stringer and Caroline Johnson

Thursday 5th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) on securing this important debate. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, as I am a practising NHS consultant, although in paediatrics rather than in any form of gynaecological surgery.

I begin by expressing my heartfelt sympathies to the women affected by injuries from pelvic mesh and, indeed, mesh in other sites, as we have heard about. Mesh is a surgical material and technically, therefore, a medical device, which was implanted in thousands of women to treat organ prolapse and urinary incontinence. However, in many cases, as we have heard today, it has caused serious long-term effects, including chronic pain, infections, organ perforation and, in some cases, permanent disability, which continues even after the mesh has been removed.

The exact number of affected women is still not known. Some have estimated the number to be 10,000, and today we have heard an estimate of 40,000. However, it is clear that it is a very large number of women. I echo the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) in thanking Baroness Cumberlege, the Conservative peer who published the independent medicines and medical devices safety review in 2020. The review panel spoke to more than 700 women and their families from across the country. The document is exceptionally comprehensive, and it puts patients’ and families’ views at the heart of the review. Their experiences make for harrowing reading. The women speak of lives damaged, families put under immense strain, relationships destroyed, careers broken, financial ruin and chronic pain.

Last week, I spoke to a woman who is suffering after having had such mesh put in. Following the surgery, the skin never healed because of a low-level infection. That lady faces awful difficulties. The mesh is visible through the skin, from the surface. It is incredibly difficult to remove. Indeed, she has not been able to find a surgeon who is willing to even try to remove it, so she suffers in the house, unable to go out and experiencing infection after infection, an increasing number of which are resistant to some antibiotics. She knows that without the mesh removal, her prognosis is poor. It is an awful situation to be in, as I am sure the Minister will agree. I know he will be doing his best to try to help. Our healthcare system has to learn from those it has failed, such as that lady, and ensure that patients are put at the front and centre of healthcare so that this cannot happen again.

The Minister needs to focus on two things: how we help those affected by the mesh scandal, and how we prevent similar incidents with medical devices that we do not yet know the harms of, or that may not yet have been invented. People should not have to pay privately for treatment to rectify things that the NHS has done wrong. When someone has had a mesh put in and the mesh needs removing, the NHS should pay for that care. If the NHS cannot provide it, the NHS and the Minister must find a way of funding that care, provided by whoever can provide it, so that women are not financially out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds for something that is not their fault.

The nine centres have been set up, and that is a good thing; they have been set up with a full multidisciplinary approach, which is also good. However, as we have heard, the outcomes are not 100% good in all cases. Surely it is intuitive that women should not have to see the same surgeon again. They should not be forced to make that explicit. It should be automatic, unless they want to see the same surgeon; it should be an opt-in system.

I urge the Minister to look at what the centres do. They provide help for women who have had pelvic mesh repair, but there are people suffering with mesh problems who have had mesh put into other places, for example near the rectum or in the abdominal wall. That may be women, but it may also be men, and they may suffer quite significant problems as a result. They need a centre, or several centres, of people who can support them and ensure that their mesh is removed, or their treatment needs are met, to stop the suffering they are experiencing.

We need a balance between ensuring that a similar scandal does not happen again and that long-term effects are picked up, and not restricting people’s access to new and innovative good treatments. In this place, we often have debates on treatments that are widely available, but not necessarily available here yet. We want to make good treatments available here quickly, but we need a robust system to identify problems as quickly as possible.

Part of that system includes the Medical Devices (Post-market Surveillance Requirements) (Amendment) (Great Britain) Regulations 2024, on which the hon. Member for Harlow, the Minister and others were recently involved in debate. When that statutory instrument was discussed in the Lords, the noble Lord Cryer said that the Government intended to introduce implant cards, and that the SI was part of a wider review of the regulation of medical devices that would be carried out in due course. Will the Minister give us some information on what that will entail? What are his thoughts on the process, and when will it happen? People need these things quickly.

I recognise the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) has done over a long time on many topics affecting women’s health, including the menopause and other concerns, and I congratulate him on that work. He represents female constituents very effectively. He talked about the fact that when surgeons inserted pelvic mesh, they often thought that it was the right thing to do. Only over time did it turn out not to be the panacea that it had been thought to be.

I remember in my medical training being told that a good surgeon is not just a surgeon who can operate well; the best surgeons are those who know when they should not be operating. It is very sad to hear that for many of the women, treatments that did not involve surgery could have been done instead, and that would have meant that those women did not suffer in the way they have done.

I highlight the point made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) on the importance of research. When we are trying to resolve the problems caused by the mesh, we need to know that we are doing that in the most effective way. We need someone to look at the clinical outcomes and ask what we are doing, whether we are doing it in the best way and what other options might be available. This problem is not limited to the United Kingdom. What is being done elsewhere? Are there international comparators that do this better, and can we emulate what they are doing?

What we need from the Minister is rapid action to address the problems faced by women who have had this mesh put in. We need him to assure us that he is doing what he can to introduce proportionate regulations that will ensure that any other devices in use and in circulation across the United Kingdom do what they are supposed to do, and do not do any harm.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I remind the Minister to leave two minutes at the end for the Member who secured the debate to reply.