Current Petitions

The next petition is PE1517, on polypropylene mesh medical devices. I welcome Neil Findlay and John Scott to the meeting. As members are aware, due to the weather in the New York area, Adam Slater is unable to appear by videoconference today. I know that that will come as a disappointment to the petitioners, who are here today, and to others who have contacted me and are also in the public gallery. We have a note by the clerk and two written submissions.

I suggest that we reschedule the evidence session with Mr Slater. What are members’ views on that?

Do you have any comments, Mr Findlay?

Before I make any comment, I would like to know whether the committee has come to any conclusions about how to proceed with the petition.

I thank Mr Carlaw for that.

It is disappointing that Mr Slater cannot give evidence, although that is perfectly understandable, given the weather conditions in the US at the moment.

We know that, since the cabinet secretary announced his alleged suspension of the use of mesh, it is still being fitted inside the bodies of women in Scotland, but that is now called a clinical trial. Since then, we have also witnessed multimillion-pound compensation settlements being paid out to several people, with thousands more sitting in the pipeline. A range of other issues are related to the on-going scandal, on matters such as the ethics of how medical trials work, the involvement of professionals in those trials and the people who sit on the review bodies. There is a tangled web of issues that we have to unravel.

If we are going to get all that out in the open—and out in the open it must come—it is up to the Parliament to do that. Whether that is through a Public Petitions Committee inquiry—I have never sat on the committee, so I do not know whether that is within its remit—by asking the Health and Sport Committee to hold an inquiry or by having a committee debate in the Parliament, something has to happen to allow us to debate all the complex issues that relate to the case.

Mr Slater used a powerful analogy in the Sunday Mail at the weekend. He said:

“Politicians wouldn’t allow a car on the road if one in 10 crashed and injured people.”

For nine out of 10 people driving those cars, the benefit outweighs the risk, but one in 10 could crash the car and end their life or dramatically change it. Are we going to allow that to continue to happen in Scotland, when we know what has happened across the US and the world?

I am happy to come back to the committee and I am keen to hear Mr Slater’s evidence, but my appeal is that the committee makes a decision very soon as to how it wants to proceed and whether to bring the issue to the Parliament or have a more in-depth inquiry. Every day that we delay, the potential is that another woman’s life is ruined.

As I said at the outset, we should schedule an evidence-taking session with Mr Slater as soon as possible, and I think that we should also invite the MHRA to give evidence. I have been advised that we cannot compel it to attend, but we will endeavour to do that. On whether we should hold an inquiry into the matter, I do not know how the process would work, but it might be quicker to have a debate on it in the chamber.

The action that the committee can take quickly is to get in touch with Mr Slater and the MHRA. That will be the end of our evidence taking, and we will then be able to compile our report and send it to the relevant parties. Thereafter, a quicker way forward might be to have a chamber debate rather than an inquiry.

I have two points. First, time is of the essence here, because the more we delay, the more potential there is for more people to be, in my view, victims of this growing scandal.

Secondly, I have not spoken to the petitioners today, but I can almost guarantee that, if the committee gets people in to give evidence on the issue, the same number of people will be here in the public gallery each time. They are probably the most determined and diligent campaigners I have come across in a long time.

Given the pain and suffering of many of these people, which is a challenge to their being here, I make an appeal that one session is held and everyone is invited to attend it, rather than the committee holding three or four sessions, in which case people who find it difficult to travel and to walk would have to come here time and again.

As there are no further comments, I will sum up. There are five action points. First, we will quickly get in touch with Mr Slater and invite him to give evidence. Secondly, we will invite the chairman and chief executive of the MHRA along. Thirdly, we will write to the new Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport and invite her back for an update. Fourthly, we will consider whether to have a single agenda item and to try to accommodate as many witnesses as we can on that day, but we will need to consider the logistics of that. The fifth point is that we will also invite the European Commission to give evidence. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Convener, you said that the committee would invite the cabinet secretary “for an update”. Just so that I am clear, does that mean that the committee will write to the cabinet secretary and she will come here to give an update, rather than doing it through correspondence?

Yes. We will invite the cabinet secretary to come back to the committee. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, colleagues.

Meeting closed at 11:46.