Hormone Pregnancy Tests Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Philip Hollobone
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Hormone Pregnancy Tests
Philip Hollobone Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. The debate can last until 1 pm. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than 12.27 pm, and the guideline limits are 10 minutes for the Scottish National party, 10 minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Yasmin Qureshi will then have three minutes at the end to wind up the debate.
We are in Back-Bench time until 12.27 pm. Six Members are seeking to contribute, so please do not speak for more than six minutes. Unhelpfully, only one of the monitors is working—the one to my right—so to assist Members, I will gesticulate at them in a friendly way when they have a minute to go.
Sir Mike Penning
I cannot understand how a drug company, now owned by Bayer, could know what was going on and continue to supply the drug in an underhand way to GPs. As a father—as a human being—I simply do not understand it. What on earth was going on? The MHRA, which gave evidence to us, was in complete denial. We did not ask for a cause. I was lucky enough to be a Minister in seven Departments. If I had said, “This is the review that you are going to do, and these are your terms of reference,” and those terms of reference were changed by the review group without my permission, I would have smelled a rat. I would have thought something was going wrong.
We can go through all the science, which cannot be denied. I do not blame any Minister—I can feel the special advisers’ eyes on my back—but something went dramatically wrong, and it has been covered up by several Governments. That must stop now. If compensation has to be paid, fine. Most of the families simply want an apology. Why is there no apology? Because there would then be the threat of legal action. Mistakes happen. When we make mistakes, we should admit it, no matter what Government are in power. We should sort it. We did that over Hillsborough when I was a Minister in the Home Office. It was a really difficult decision to make, but we made it, and the right conclusion was reached. That should be the case in this instance.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
I am afraid I will have to impose a five-minute limit on speeches, or we will run out of time.