Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review

Debate between Joan Ryan and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

This is a complex procedure that can go wrong, so it would only ever be used if it was absolutely the right thing for patients. We have looked at this very carefully. Other countries have introduced restrictions on the use of mesh, but we have concluded that that would be disadvantageous to women in certain circumstances. However, that means that we have to take much more care in when it is used so that we avoid those truly horrific complications.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

Those whose lives have been forever changed by the drug Primodos will be very disappointed today, despite there being a step in the right direction. Asking Lord O’Shaughnessy to drive forward the recommendations of the expert working group will not bring any confidence. That expert working group changed its terms of reference: it was asked to examine whether a possible association exists between Primodos and birth defects and it did not do that; it looked at a causal association. That is the crux of the problem, and that is what makes that working group’s findings unacceptable, aside from the fact that the scientific evidence not included existed before it even started its investigation. Unless these factors are taken into account in a wide-ranging independent inquiry, I doubt those victims will ever get the satisfaction and justice they deserve.

[Mr Hunt]

I hear what the right hon. Lady is saying. The reason it was important to ask whether there was a causal link was that it has an implication for the compensation to which people might be entitled, but I would like to reassure her that Baroness Cumberlege will have the freedom to look at all the issues that she has raised.

National Health Service Funding

Debate between Joan Ryan and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I have often from this Dispatch Box been prepared to praise some of the achievements of the last Labour Government. They did bring down waiting times, but they did not focus on the quality and safety of care.

What we now know from the CQC’s new regime, which has just finished its first round of inspections, is that 56% of our hospitals are good or outstanding. One could say that it is disappointing to know that 44% of hospitals are not, but to those who would use that as a political weapon I say this: we are the only country in the world brave enough to set up an independent inspection regime, and if we want to have the safest, highest quality care, the first thing we need to know is where it is good and where we need to improve it. I thank the chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, for his outstanding work in raising quality.

[Joan Ryan]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the inspection regime, but I think I am right in saying that it was not something he and his Government introduced. The Care Quality Commission was introduced by a Labour Government, as far as I am aware. As I know from North Middlesex hospital, hospitals end up in special measures because they are underfunded and under-supported, and cannot get the doctors they need.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Debate between Joan Ryan and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Regrettably, there has not been only one occasion. In the October before the election, the junior doctors committee walked out of talks after extensive efforts to negotiate a new contract. We then had the independent pay review body process. Then—this was the most shocking thing of all—we had the decision of the committee to ballot for strike action before it had even been prepared to sit down and talk to me about what the new contract involved. That has been at the heart of so many misunderstandings about this contract and has led to so much disappointment on all sides. If the committee had sat down and talked to us, it would have discovered that we all want the same thing: a safer, seven-day NHS.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State tells us he has spent over three years on this matter—three years, and he has brought us to this unprecedented state of affairs. May I gently suggest to him that it is not the junior doctors who are the problem, but him? My constituents—hundreds of whom have written to me—overwhelmingly feel that he has been irresponsible and intransigent. He needs to get back to the negotiating table, lift the imposition and put the people who need A&E—in the next few days and beyond —first.

[Mr Hunt]

If the right hon. Lady is asking whether I will compromise in my pursuit of a safer NHS for her constituents and my constituents, the answer is I will not. I am the Health Secretary who had to deal with Mid Staffs and with a huge number of hospitals up and down the country that the Labour party, when in power, did nothing to turn around. We dealt with that. We put 27 hospitals into special measures. We have dramatically increased the number of doctors and nurses in our hospital wards because we care about a safer NHS. When there are issues about weekend care, the right thing to do is to address those issues, not to duck them.