Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Nadine Dorries

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend, who commissioned the review in 2018. Thank goodness he did, because without it, these voices would still be struggling to be heard.

On my right hon. Friend’s question about the patient safety commissioner, as that is a recommendation, it will be considered, as will every other recommendation. It is important to mention that we have Aiden Fowler, whom my right hon. Friend appointed to NHS Improvement to take on the head of patient safety role on behalf of NHS England. That does not mean that we will not consider the recommendation thoroughly; we will do so.

Obviously, I cannot speak for the Secretary of State, but I am sure he is aware of my right hon. Friend’s comments. I cannot commit to coming back by the end of September; what I can give the House is my absolute assurance that I will chase this daily. The work commenced when the report became available to us, and a huge amount of work has been done overnight on assessing the recommendations made in the report. I or the Secretary of State will be back here as soon as possible with our recommendations.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. Of course, her apology is very welcome.

“We have found that the healthcare system—in which I include the NHS, private providers, the regulators and professional bodies, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, and policymakers—is disjointed, siloed, unresponsive and defensive.”

Those words in “First Do No Harm”, the report published yesterday on the Primodos, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh scandals, are a hugely powerful indication of the abject failings that must be addressed by the Government. Credit must go to Baroness Cumberlege and her team for all their work.

Yesterday was a landmark day for victims and survivors of those scandals, and we pay tribute to all the campaigners who fought so hard for so long, including Primodos campaigner Marie Lyon and my constituent Wilma Ord, whose daughter Kirsteen was affected by Primodos. Their fight must now be our fight.

Justice is not served until the recommendations are fully implemented. I understand the desire and the need to reflect on what is needed, but a full commitment to the implementation of all the recommendations is vital. In particular, will the Minister ensure that the taskforce to guide the recommendations is set up at speed and as soon as possible? Will she also commit to vigorous pressure being exerted on companies such as Bayer, which, to be frank, have got away with murder? They are responsible for Primodos and need to pay proper compensation to victims.

Will the Minister ensure that the recommendation of a patient safety commissioner is implemented and the post established as quickly as possible? In the words of Branwen Mann, a young person affected by sodium valproate,

“I know that the full harm done by sodium valproate is barely understood, or even recognised by anyone other than the family that live it.”

That cannot continue.

Finally, will the Minister ensure that the central patient identifiable database is created by collecting details on the implantation of all devices at the time of operation? So many patients affected by surgical mesh and other devices have never had their devices tracked or registered, which in the age of advanced technology is, I am sure she agrees, frankly ridiculous.

[Ms Dorries]

Again, that is a list of asks, and as I said in my reply to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), we will take on board all the requests made and come back in time with a full report.

On the hon. Lady’s last ask, about the database, we have begun working with NHSX on establishing a database of those women who have had the vaginal mesh. We are looking at how those meshes can be safety removed, with their consent and with all the details explained to them. Getting that database together, both historically and moving forward, is work in progress. On the rest of the hon. Lady’s asks, we will be back with a full report, in which all of her points will have been considered.

Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Nadine Dorries

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I rise to speak because if I said this in an intervention, I would test the patience of the House by speaking for too long.

When I first arrived in the House, I was told by a veteran that in the House were good men, clever men and those with good grace. I want to pay tribute to the Minister, who has somehow managed to climb the greasy pole while embodying all three qualities. As Members on both sides of the House know, he is an incredibly hard working Minister for Housing and Planning. When were in opposition, I was always quick to praise Labour Ministers, including those who once held a similar position. I will forgive him for the fact that he is sending notes to love bomb the waverers.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). It would have been a shock, from what I know of his 11 years in the House, if he had not led on this amendment today. He is a man of huge principle. Those of us who have been in the House during those 11 years and have heard him speak with huge conviction on such issues will understand why he has led on this amendment and why so many of us support him.

This whole issue is rooted in devolution, the natural direction of which is towards localism. Therefore, at the risk of sounding like the Leader of the Opposition, I want to speak on behalf of my constituents. Mr Kishor Patel was shortlisted for retailer of the year last year. He came to the House of Commons and was the runner-up. He runs Nisa in Toddington in my constituency, where he has opened a number of stores. He is an amazing small retailer. He recently took a derelict pub in my constituency and turned it into a restaurant. He says that he does not want me to support the proposal in the Bill; he wants me to vote against it. His pub is at its busiest, with families enjoying themselves, on Sundays. He is incredibly worried that, if the proposal goes forward and bigger stores can open for longer on Sundays, pubs like his will not stay open for longer, but will fail. It is the business he does on Sundays, when families can enjoy themselves at the local pub, that makes the difference between its being profitable and not profitable.

Mr Patel also does not want me not to support the proposal in the Bill because of the impact on his small high street shops, which are valued by local communities. In my constituency, it is not particularly easy to get out to the big stores, so people depend on small high street stores. However, the situation would be quite different if the big stores were open all day, because people would make the effort to go out to the bigger stores or to travel into London, and that would have a huge impact on local shops in Mid Bedfordshire.

I want to declare an interest in that my family owned a local shop. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned the Trafford centre. When that opened and got busy, the family local shop stopped opening on a Sunday and began to suffer as a result. It is a known fact that small high street shops must constantly go the extra mile to compete with the big stores. They do not have the resources to man their stores seven days a week—and seven nights a week, because the paperwork, the ordering, the PAYE and so on is done while the shop is closed, not when it is open.

This proposal was not in our manifesto. The Bill began in the Lords, not in this House, and the policy has never received sufficient public discussion. If we want to do this, let us put a measure in the Queen’s Speech and let the public know about it properly, and let us have a full consultation and a public debate.

[Hannah Bardell]

I am pleased that we have the opportunity to debate the extension of Sunday trading hours. Since the original proposals were withdrawn by the Government, my colleagues and I have been engaging widely with people and organisations on both sides of the debate. Contrary to media speculation and the misinformation peddled by Government Front Benchers, the SNP has, as we said we would, reached our conclusions on the basis of the evidence that has been presented to us.

There are a variety of views across this House and across the country. I intend to outline my concerns about the effect of the UK Government’s proposals on workers’ rights and benefits in Scotland and the UK. However, I should say at the outset that my SNP colleagues and I have no objection to the principle of extending trading hours on Sundays. After all, in Scotland, as has been said many times, we already enjoy unrestricted trading hours on Sundays. It is important to note that in the past, restraints on Sunday opening in Scotland have existed, but they have largely been social rather than legal. There are, of course, areas of Scotland where there is greater religious observance and Sunday opening hours are more restricted but, in general, the practice of longer opening hours on Sundays, particularly in retail, is now well established throughout Scotland, and some evidence suggests that that has been the case since the late 1980s.

The UK Government’s proposals represent the uniform deregulation of trading hours restrictions across these islands. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but without adequate legal protections, which we and others have called for, the employment protections of workers and their remuneration would be threatened.

The Government’s impact assessment, which was published only this morning, identifies more than 450,000 retail workers across the UK who receive premium pay, but in the 44-page assessment, the Government dedicate just one paragraph to that and dismiss out of hand the concerns of workers and of USDAW. Even now, faced with defeat, the UK Government refuse to offer assurances about premium pay. They engage in ping-pong politics, looking for ways to get the numbers through the Lobby.