Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

My interest in this matter arises as I chair the APPG on Primodos, and it is a campaign that I and many other MPs have been working on for the past 12 years. On one occasion, after a big debate, the Minister ordered an expert working group to be set up. The MHRA was supposed to examine the evidence. We the campaigners and Members of Parliament thought that all the documents we had would be looked at by the MHRA, but clearly it did not look at them. The MHRA was supposed to engage with the victims and their families, but they were not spoken to or dealt with properly, and there was no thorough examination.

In fact, some of the members of the expert working group, which was set up by the Commission on Human Medicines, had connections with pharmaceutical companies. We wanted the MHRA to look at the documents, which showed very clearly that in the 1970s it was accepted by the then Committee on Safety of Medicines that this drug was causing deformities. However, the chief medical officer at the time colluded with the manufacturer, destroyed the evidence and refused to help.

We have documents that show that the manufacturer knew there was a cover-up, and yet the MHRA refused to look at them. Subsequently, Professor Carl Heneghan from Oxford University looked at the same material the EWG had looked at and came to a completely different conclusion: he said the evidence showed that there was a connection. The EWG was asked to look at whether there was a causal connection, and it changed its recommendation again. The former Prime Minister, Mrs May, was also not convinced by the expert working group. We persuaded her to set up a review chaired by Baroness Cumberlege, who said there was avoidable harm and that the victims should be compensated.

Throughout all those years, the Government of the day did not want to communicate with us, and they have not been dealing with this issue properly. They have always relied on the expert working group’s report, which has held the victims back and held us back from pursuing a possible legal claim. We say to the Government now that the EWG report needs to be relooked at, and Professor Carl Heneghan’s study of it should also be looked at. Scientific evidence has been produced using an experiment on zebrafish which shows that there is a link with this drug, and we have sent this to the Commission on Human Medicines for the Department to look at.

We must remember that this drug is 40 times the strength of the morning after pill. Women were given this pill and told it had no effect other than to see whether they were pregnant, and it then caused this damage. I ask the Minister today, with the new Government now in place, to please relook at this; the report by the EWG, which was set up by the MHRA, has been discredited, so please stop listening to it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.