Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that an Expert Working Panel Group Inquiry was set up by the Government to investigate and assess evidence on children born with serious deformities due to hormone pregnancy test drugs taken by expectant mothers between 1953 and 1975; further notes with concern that the terms of reference as set out by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency do not clearly allow for an investigation into the systematic regulatory failures of government bodies at the time; notes the conflict of interest of some panel members; further notes that all evidence must be presented to expert panel members as set out in the term of reference; calls on the Inquiry to ensure that all evidence is presented to the expert panel with sufficient time for due consideration; further calls on the inquiry to guarantee thorough background checks on all panel members; calls for the terms of reference to be amended to include an investigation into the conduct of the Committee on Safety of Medicines; further calls on the Government to ensure that the inquiry has the trust and confidence of the victims for whom it was set up; and believes that, unless these changes are made, the ability of the Inquiry to achieve a fair outcome will be significantly compromised.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate—the second on this issue, which I started to campaign on five years ago. Just under two years ago, I asked the Backbench Business Committee for a debate about a drug called Primodos, which was prescribed to pregnant women in the 1960s and 1970s. It had 40 times the strength of oral contraceptives prescribed today, and we know what they were devised for. It is estimated that at least 1.5 million women may have taken this drug, and thousands of families suffered. In answer to a written parliamentary question, the then Minister assessed that 3,540 women may have suffered effects. We think that the actual figure is much higher.

This all started in 2011, when I met my constituent Nichola at her home. She was born with life-threatening internal congenital deformities to her stomach, spine, heart and womb. She had her first operation was when she was seven days old. Since then, her life has consisted of visiting hospital, as an in-patient and an out-patient, and going through various procedures. Another of my constituents is Bridget Olive.

When I met Nichola at her home, I saw boxes and boxes of documents, some of which had been leaked by various pharmaceutical companies and other bodies. I had a brief look through some of those documents, and it was at that point that I decided that the issue needed more than mentioning, or raising; we needed a real investigation and an inquiry on what happened. I am not exaggerating or being over-emotional, but, applying my legal knowledge in my capacity as a barrister, I am prepared to say that there was deliberate criminal, negligent oversight by the then Committee on Safety of Medicines as regards this drug and its usage, and the fact that it continued to be prescribed for years, despite most of the medical community knowing that it had caused adverse consequences for the women who took it.

At the end of the first debate on this subject, the Minister agreed that there would be an expert panel inquiry on the issue. He agreed, in and outside Parliament, that the inquiry would look at all the available documents, including those that we would provide, or had come across, and those in the archives. The Minister went further and ordered that all the documents held by the current equivalent body, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, should be revealed. The inquiry was to look at all the documents and assess what had happened. I will come on to what the inquiry has produced, but this debate is more about how the inquiry has progressed. An inquiry that becomes a whitewash is pointless and a waste of time and money.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this incredibly important debate, and I reiterate and agree with what she says. When at the heart of the matter there is a regulator who took eight years to act between 1967 and 1975, and many years later is investigating what it had done, it is crucial that that inquiry is seen to be independent and full.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I shall come on to the issue of the independence of the inquiry and the members of the panel.

The Minister indicated that the inquiry would be carried out by an independent panel of experts and said that it would look at everything that had happened and the lessons to be learned. Our present concern is about what happened, who did what and who failed to do what, and what compensation and apology victims will receive.

I shall briefly highlight some of the evidence that we have uncovered, which shows what happened in the 1960s and 1970s.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Along with other Members, I want to pay great tribute to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who has run a terrific campaign on this issue, worked tirelessly, set up the APPG and raised an issue that ought to be of the greatest concern to all Members because it goes, in a way, to the heart of how Governments behave. I want to focus on the inquiry and the need to establish faith with the families who have been involved with what has happened in relation to Primodos.

It seems to me that there is a strong prima facie case that something was wrong with this drug, that it was known to the authorities and that they failed to act on it for an extended period. The first warning about it was on 11 July 1967 and the adverse reaction committee felt that there were grounds for further investigation, yet it was eight years later in 1975 when it was said that Primodos was not to be prescribed for women who were pregnant. That seems to me so irresponsible, when the risks of prescribing drugs to pregnant women are so particularly high.

Governments are amazingly good at apologising for things that happened so long ago that there is nothing that can be done about them. I seem to remember that one Government apologised for the Irish potato famine 150 years after it had happened. That does no good to anybody. What Governments need to do is to put things right when people are still alive and affected by the failings that took place. But when they have not acted, when time has gone by, the onus of proof shifts to them.

It is for Governments at that point to show how well they are behaving and how properly they are going through the process. It is for them to rebuild the trust with the families, not for the families to accept guarantees from the Government without any depth to them. Therefore, with the appointments to this inquiry, the information that is being made available to it and the investigations that are taking place, the Government have a long way to go to re-establish a trust that was probably lost as long ago as 1975. It is in that context that I hope the Minister will respond to make it clear that the Government understand the strength of the case that has been made, will be looking at it with a genuinely open mind, and will see not that things can be put right, but at least that some amelioration should be made if it is found in the end that there was fault in what the Government did, what the regulator did and, of course, what the drug company did.

There are so many bits and pieces that cause suspicion—the disappearance of records is a particularly important one. Where did those records go, as the hon. Member for Bolton South East asked? A lot of the information is in German and there is a question over whether it is being translated even for the committee. When such issues hang over an inquiry, the Government have a lot of work to do to re-establish trust so that Members of this House and, more importantly, the people affected can believe that the inquiry is fair.

Once again, I congratulate the hon. Lady on what she has done. I do not want to go into specific cases because I think those will be judged by the inquiry and that it will be a proper process to investigate whether the evidence is there on a widespread scale, but with such a strong base case, as we already know, we must have an inquiry that people can trust.