Warinder Juss

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for securing this important debate and for all the work she does on this issue. As I mentioned earlier, I specialised in pursuing clinical negligence claims on behalf of women who had had mesh implants, and I have seen many examples of the type of life-changing injuries described by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). As the Hughes report confirmed, these women were in debilitating pain after the implants; they were forced to stop working and faced a lifetime of uncertainty. The implants had a major impact on their relationships. My hon. Friend’s client was lucky in the sense that she had a supportive husband, but I had many clients whose marital relationships had broken down because of the inability to have intimate relationships following the mesh implant. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said that 10,000 women had been affected by pelvic mesh implants, but the campaign organisation Sling the Mesh has argued that that figure could be as high as 40,000. Before the Hughes report was published in February 2024, we had Baroness Cumberlege’s report in July 2020. She said that there should be a Government apology, a scheme to meet the cost of providing additional care and support to those affected, and a network of specialist centres. A patient engagement survey carried out by the Patient Safety Commissioner found that more than half of those impacted by pelvic mesh or valproate said that it had had a very negative impact on their ability to work, and that it affected their financial situation. More than three quarters said that it had a very negative impact on their mental health. It is essential that the Government provide a redress scheme. The right hon. Member for New Forest East said that delay will not help matters, and we have all heard the phrase “Justice delayed is justice denied.” The clients that I dealt with just wanted to move on with their lives. It is essential that we have a redress system that works quickly, so that these women can try to rebuild their lives and move on. The redress scheme must provide not only financial compensation but non-financial compensation. The right hon. Member mentioned PIP. Lots of these women struggled to apply for PIP and other benefits after they had been injured. They had little or no access to mental health services, and they were exposed to an inaccessible and adversarial legal system that was complicated to navigate. There are often delays in legal claims, and we need to move away from that. We need a Government-backed compensation scheme that is similar to the infected blood compensation scheme that this Government are properly pursuing. Only with such a scheme will we have proper redress for these women and ensure that justice is given to those impacted by this tragedy.