Cumberlege Report

Sarah Green Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I add my thanks to the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) for securing this debate.

I would like to highlight the excellent work of the Epilepsy Society on sodium valproate. The Epilepsy Society is based at Chalfont St Peter, in my constituency, and its “Safe Mum, Safe Baby” campaign calls on the Government to fund research into safer epilepsy medication for pregnant women. It is a necessary and worthwhile campaign and I support it wholeheartedly. I hope the Government will give it due consideration.

I also pay tribute to my constituent Carol Nunn, who has given me permission to share her experience of surgical mesh. I understand from the Government’s response to the Cumberlege report that their priority is to make medicines and devices safer and prevent future harm. While that is good to hear, I agree with the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell and others that maintaining this narrow focus entirely misses much of what is at the heart of the report, which is improving the lives of people who have already been harmed.

The Government have stated that supporting these women is one of their priorities. If that is the case, I do not understand why they repeatedly refuse to establish redress schemes. The Minister has claimed that there is no evidence that a redress scheme would improve the outcomes for these women. Respectfully, is the Minister really listening? Victims have lost jobs, endured relationship difficulties and financial stress and been left with chronic and often debilitating pain. They deserve redress.

I want to tell Members about Carol. When I first spoke to her last summer, she told me how, four years earlier, she had undergone a hysteropexy and rectopexy using surgical mesh. Instead of resolving her pelvic organ prolapse, the procedures left Carol with a serious autoimmune disease, struggling to walk and unable to continue with her normal daily life. She had to take long-term sick leave from her job as a medical doctor. She told me that she could not remember a day without pain.

I am pleased to say that today Carol is mesh-free following a successful removal surgery last year. She is the first person in England to have undergone successful rectal mesh removal. Although she is still suffering, Carol told me that she feels fortunate to have reached this outcome because, unlike many others, she was able to look outside the national health service and outside the United Kingdom. She feels fortunate because her professional training as a doctor gave her access to the knowledge and resources that allowed her to find Dr Veronikis—I apologise if I have pronounced that incorrectly—and fly out to the United States to have her mesh removed there. I am not convinced that anyone who has had to endure what Carol endured can be classified as fortunate, but I understand her point.

Having lost jobs and shouldered the financial burden of life-changing symptoms, others cannot afford to pay out thousands of pounds for private surgery or international travel to remedy harm that could and should have been avoided. That has now been acknowledged elsewhere in the UK. Last week, a Bill that will allow the Scottish Government to reimburse women who have had to pay for transvaginal mesh removal was passed in the Scottish Parliament. The Transvaginal Mesh Removal (Cost Reimbursement) (Scotland) Bill enjoyed cross-party support. I regret that it excludes the removal of mesh used in other parts of the body, but it is an excellent first step towards justice for mesh victims. I am pleased that patients north of the border now have access to support. I would like to be able to offer the same to my own constituents, which is why I urge the Government to look again at recommendations 3 and 4 of the Cumberlege report and to set up redress schemes.

I want to be clear: the mesh centres set up across the UK are, for many, inaccessible. For those, like Carol, who had rectopexy mesh, there is nowhere in the country offering removal without life-changing surgery involving the removal of organs. Carol, who is herself a doctor, described that type of surgery as barbaric. As has been mentioned, where removal is available the Government too often expect women to have the mesh removed by the same surgeon who inserted it. The choice facing victims is really no choice at all.

At the heart of the report is the recommendation that financial redress should be made available. In denying it, the Government completely miss the point of the report—the need to listen to victims. Baroness Cumberlege and her team met more than 700 affected individuals, mostly women, and found that they were not being listened to by medical professionals. Now they are not being listened to by their own Government. What is the point of commissioning a review if Ministers ignore one of its central findings? I hope the Minister and the Government will revisit the report’s recommendations and look again at offering financial redress, because ultimately it is the right thing to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield]

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but the vast majority of claims that come through NHS Resolution are settled out of court. We want to make sure that patients get the redress that they are entitled to. There are mechanisms other than going to court in place right now.

[Sarah Green]

My constituent has approached several legal firms who will not take on her case because the two surgeons who operated on her also work for the law firms advising them on whether such cases will be successful, so that option is not open to her.

[Maria Caulfield]

If the hon. Lady writes to me about that specific case, I am happy to look at it.

The Government published their response to the review in July last year and accepted the majority of the recommendations for improvement. I want to update Members on those because we are absolutely committed to making rapid progress in all the areas in our response. We have committed to publishing an update on the progress of all the recommendations that we accepted, and we aim to publish that in the summer. If colleagues want to hold my feet to the fire, they will certainly get a formal update in the summer.

We have made strong progress on some of the changes.