Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 November 2021
As a member of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I welcome the cross-party support for the bill’s general principles that has been expressed in the debate.
I thank the women who came forward to share their experiences, which could not have been easy. Without their assistance, we would not have been able to uncover the serious damage that transvaginal mesh surgery caused.
We are talking about not just physical damage but emotional, mental and financial damage. As members said, the damage and pain that women have endured as a result of mesh implants cannot be overstated. Lives have been turned upside down, mental health has been destroyed and finances have been stretched to the brink, all while the women were putting up daily with excruciating pain.
For the women at the centre of the crisis, following medical advice seemed the obvious thing to do. We would all have done the same thing; we accept the advice of our medical professionals, who act on the best information that is available to them. Women who were living with issues such as stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse trusted the medical guidance to have mesh, or transvaginal tape, implanted into their bodies. That mesh can cause severe pain in the lower abdomen, which sometimes leaves women unable to walk.
We must accept that, occasionally, our health service professionals will get things wrong. That is inevitable, so it was absolutely right to permanently halt the use of TVT and apologise to the women who were affected. When something goes wrong, the most important thing is to put it right with due diligence and care and as fast as reasonably possible.
Over the past few months, I have heard heartbreaking testimonies detailing not only the physical pain but significant mental and emotional trauma. For some women, the pain has been so severe that they have been forced to fund private healthcare through remortgages, bank loans, credit cards, borrowing from family and friends or crowdfunding.
For those women, many of whom are still in substantial debt, time is of the essence. There can be no further delay. I, like other members, have listened to them. More importantly, the cabinet secretary and the Scottish Government have listened. I am sure that every member in the Parliament will support the bill and its fast tracking so that the women do not have to wait any longer, as they have waited long enough.
The Government has confirmed that women who arranged mesh removal surgery will be eligible to apply for reimbursement and that it does not matter whether the surgery was successful. I completely understand that, for the women who have been through such traumatic experiences, compensation for corrective surgery might not be enough. We must do more to right those wrongs and build back the trust.
To ensure that patients receive treatment in which they have confidence, a procurement process is under way to allow appropriately qualified surgeons from outside the NHS to perform removal for patients in Scotland. This is clearly an exceptional situation. Our brilliant and dedicated staff in the NHS have learned from those past mistakes. The complex mesh removal service is now established in NHS Scotland to allow everyone who was affected to get the treatment and care that they need.
I am also pleased that the Health and Social Care Alliance will undertake a patient focus group to understand patients’ views on how the reimbursement scheme might work in practice. The feedback from that will play an important role in shaping the scheme.
I welcome the Scottish Government’s response to the committee’s stage 1 report, in which it accepted the bulk of the committee’s recommendations, as the cabinet secretary outlined. I also note the urgency with which the Government wants to act.
I note the Government’s intention to take a proportionate and flexible approach under the bill to the provision of evidence of costs incurred. That will provide much reassurance to the women who are involved. I also note that some points will be considered in the draft scheme and I look forward to seeing it.
Sadly, transvaginal mesh was used regularly in Scotland before 2014. It was also used in the rest of the UK and throughout the world. Scotland is the first UK country to reimburse people for private treatment and I am pleased that the Scottish Government is, once again, leading the way and taking decisive action to make people’s lives better.
I thank my colleagues in committee and around the chamber for welcoming the bill to Parliament.
16:03