Continued Petitions

I am grateful that the committee has carried out the work that it has carried out and for the letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport, Shona Robison. I am delighted that the committee has taken a very serious matter forward in a thoughtful and sensitive way.

I note from the committee’s paper that it believes that consideration of the petition should be extended into the next session of Parliament. If that is the view of the members of the committee, I share it.

On behalf of the many affected petitioners, I congratulate the committee on its efforts thus far. It should keep up the good work and keep watching, because not all the problems have been solved yet. I am aware of recent reports in the press about huge claims having been paid out in America because of injuries that have been suffered as a result of mesh implants. That is only likely to lead to more litigation in this country. To avoid that in the future, we must be vigilant in how we deal with the problem.

It is clear that we should keep the petition open and include it in our legacy paper.

I note two specific points in the cabinet secretary’s letter. First, we will see a copy of the report on the single-incision mini-slings. Secondly, and more urgently, there is the de facto determination that the regulation of medical devices is reserved to Westminster and that our concern about the conduct of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and its interrogation of the devices cannot be addressed by our looking to the Scottish Government to set up a parallel operation.

It would be useful for the committee to write to the United Kingdom Government minister who is responsible for the MHRA, drawing their attention to the work that the committee has done on the subject and asking how we can influence the debate that is taking place over whether the MHRA is properly regulating the devices, about which we have significant concern.

Thank you very much for allowing me to speak, convener.