Redress is about more than compensation, it’s about patient safety

The harm caused by pelvic mesh and valproate represents some of the most serious patient safety failures in recent NHS history. Both caused avoidable, life-changing harm on a large scale, with patients not always receiving the right information to make informed decisions about their treatment, failures in post-market surveillance and patients’ concerns too often being dismissed. Valproate, while a vital treatment for some patients with epilepsy, migraine and bipolar disorder, can cause devastating harm to an unborn child when taken during pregnancy.

The effects of prenatal exposure can be complex and lifelong, leaving many children, young people and adults unable to live independently, with families providing long-term care.

Pelvic mesh procedures, used to treat stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, have left thousands of women living with severe complications, including chronic pain and loss of mobility, affecting careers, independence and relationships.

The 2020 First Do No Harm review brought these failures together and made a compelling case for redress. In 2024, I published the Hughes Report, after being asked by Government to set out how that redress could be delivered. Developed with patients and families, it recommended a two-stage financial redress scheme alongside better care and support for those affected.

Redress cannot undo the harm people have experienced. But it can recognise what happened, provide meaningful support and help restore dignity.

Crucially, it is also about learning and patient safety. If we learn from what went wrong we can prevent history from repeating itself.

It is unacceptable that, more than two and a half years after the Hughes Report, patients and families are still waiting for a substantive Government response and a clear route to redress.

New documentaries about women harmed by pelvic mesh The Medical Mesh Scandal Ruining Women’s Lives and families affected by valproate Mums v Big Pharma have brought these experiences and the calls for redress into focus again.

These are different experiences, but both demonstrate what can happen when a healthcare system fails to recognise and act on harm. They also underline the urgent need for Government action.

Prof Henrietta Hughes, Patient Safety Commissioner for England