Breast Implants

Paul Uppal Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot tell the hon. Lady how many clinics the CQC will visit, but it will be a sample of providers, not all of them. As she may know from the material we published last Friday, there were 93 private providers. The operations were heavily concentrated in that a lot of them were carried out by a small proportion of providers, but about 87 other small providers, or even single-handed providers, are involved and accessing data from all of them will be difficult. I also recognise that, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) said, some may not be in business any longer, or there may be surgeons who have retired.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

I also thank the Secretary of State for making the statement. Following on from a vein of questioning that has already been explored, will he elaborate on the point about the Government pursuing firms to recover costs and explain what mechanisms are available to the Secretary of State to recover costs?

[Mr Lansley]

I will do so to an extent. It depends on the nature of the legal contract between a woman and her private provider. I hope that in many cases the legal obligations derived under that contract or under sale of goods and services legislation will clearly mean that the woman will get redress from her private providers or her insurers. If the NHS becomes involved, there may be compensation through the injury costs recovery scheme, so if the NHS incurs costs, we can go on to seek to recover them.