Chamber and committees

I am not sure that all the committee members will have had that experience specifically coming from Ibrox, but I am sure that we have all sat in a cab with the meter running.

Mr Grant, do you want to come in?

The petition will stay open, and we will seek to gather evidence for consideration at a later date.

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of the petition first coming to the Parliament. It identified what has emerged as one of the great health scandals of our time—transvaginal mesh. I want to continue to approach the issue in as bipartisan a way as possible, paying tribute to Alex Neil, Jeane Freeman and, indeed, Humza Yousaf, who have all made quantitative and qualitative steps forward in addressing the issue and improving the treatment of many women.

What was a bill is now an act, and women who went to the United States to have transvaginal mesh removed are now having the costs reimbursed. I have heard from constituents who have now received back the funds that they had to lay out in the first place in order to undertake what was, in effect, life-enhancing and life-saving surgery for themselves.

However, I say to the minister that I have a concern. I am hearing that a rather pedantic dead hand is beginning to be applied to the women who are now in the process of seeking to have that money reimbursed. They are being told for the first time that only basic economic flight costs will be reimbursed, not necessarily the cost of the flight that they undertook.

For some of the women, whose health has been seriously compromised and who have been physically in a distressed situation, a basic economic flight was not the most appropriate way for them to travel to the United States. We have to be very careful that we do not start treating those women as if they were going on some holiday excursion. They were going to the United States to have the transvaginal mesh removed to enhance their quality of life. When we say that we are going to reimburse the costs that they have incurred, we should be prepared to reimburse all the reasonable costs that they have incurred in undertaking that.

Secondly, I am slightly concerned that, although Dr Veronikis has removed transvaginal mesh from women, the cost of which has been reimbursed, and has been given a contract by the NHS to remove transvaginal mesh from other women, I understand that not a single patient has been referred to him—not one. In addition, his contract is for just a year and I understand that, even if women are referred to him, a cap has been placed on the number of women who can go to him. That is because there is still a prejudice, not within this Parliament but within our medical establishment, that they know better than Dr Veronikis and they want women to go through a process that involves them.

Yes, we have the Glasgow centre for mesh excellence that has been referred to, but there is currently a 46-week waiting time for anybody to be seen at it. If you have been waiting all these years for the removal of a mesh implant that has compromised your living, 46 weeks is not an acceptable delay whatsoever. In addition, many of the women are being sent to a doctor in Bristol who is one of the doctors who was telling women that they had had a full mesh removal, only for Dr Veronikis to pull out acres of additional centimetres of mesh from within them when they saw him. It is no wonder that they do not have confidence in the process.

I say to the minister that, although we are making superb progress, we have to be mindful that there are still some very serious and significant issues in the practice that need to be addressed. We have to ensure that we are listening to the women who have been affected and doing right by them, not just saying in the chamber that we are doing right by them. My concern is with some of the medical establishment, and we need a strong hand in responding to and dealing with that.

My final point is one that we come back to on a number of occasions. Daniel Johnson made reference to it in relation to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. There is cross-party consensus in this Parliament for us, as a Parliament, to approach the United Kingdom Government in respect of what we have seen as the shortcomings of the MHRA and to try to find a solution that would allow Scotland—I say this as a unionist—to approach these issues from a health perspective that is unique to Scotland. For whatever reason, the Scottish Government has not wanted to take advantage of that cross-party consensus in the chamber. I really implore it to consider doing so. We do not want to see future avoidable surgical implant health crises that we could, if we applied ourselves more directly and appropriately, avoid.

I am very grateful to the minister for everything that she has said, but I want to tie two pieces of the issue together. I am pleased to hear that women will be able to travel to an independent provider—I presume, Dr Veronikis—from October, but both Jackie Baillie and I have referred to the extended waiting time for women to go through the process of coming to a conclusion about what they want to do. If the contract with Dr Veronikis is for only one year, there is the very obvious danger that a significant number of women will not be in a position to make a judgment until we are almost at the end of the contract period during which they can take advantage of an independent provider that has been approved. Will the minister keep an eye on that and commit to potentially extending that contract to ensure that all women, irrespective of when they come to a decision, are able to elect for the independent option?

I am content to do all of that. Are members content?

Members indicated agreement.

We will write as Mr Torrance has suggested, keep the petition open and consider it afresh when we hear from those bodies.

That concludes the public section of our meeting. We will next meet on 26 October.

We now move into private session for consideration of item 4.

I do not see anything in the briefing that we have received that would change the fact that the product is not approved. We might have asked to see the system in practice, but that would not have changed the fact that it has not been approved as meeting the standard.

I do not see that we can take this any further, so I am inclined to agree, in view of the evidence that we have received, that we must close the petition. Are members content?

Members indicated agreement.

Personally, I am reluctant to close the petitions without trying to drill down on that information. I accept that we need to get some sort of date. I wonder whether the clerks could verify that information from Mr Whittle in relation to Belfast. If we are asking for a timeline, it would be good to couple that with evidence that the delay in establishing a timeline is leading to a transference of the potential business that would use that route, which could have a compound effect in due course and undermine the financial viability of the region and the route. That is why we think that the delay in getting any firm timescale is unhelpful.

Okay. There is only so far that a committee can take things, but I think that it is worth pursuing, because there is a commitment to do something but no commitment as to when it will be done. We might want to try to get the latter.

Members indicated agreement.

There is certainly an opportunity to do that.