Sharon Hodgson MP: Campaigners and those harmed, including my own mam, have now waited long enough
As 2026 begins, I find myself reflecting on the progress of my key campaigns over the past year. While there has been significant progress in many of them, one falls short.
In 2025, we have seen a cap promised on tickets resold on the secondary ticket market, the expansion of free school meals to all recipients of universal credit and the announcement of the metro extension to Washington, all things I have long campaigned for.
While all these announcements have filled me with pride and given me a gratified view of the past year, one campaign sadly remains stalled. The First Do No Harm campaign is an umbrella term which covers the mesh, primodos and valproate scandals and more generally calls for a healthcare system that is more transparent, less defensive, that listens and learns more effectively.
While the three grouped health campaigns themselves of course differ in their specifics, the overriding themes amongst them all are consistent. That is: they all affect women; they all are the result of a system that gaslights rather than listens and they all highlight a clear lack of transparency between industry and our healthcare system.
Baroness Cumberlege’s ‘Independent medicines and medical devices safety’ review highlighted these themes and offered nine recommendations as a result to provide restorative justice but also as a preventative measure for future scandals.
While there has been some progress, for example the appointment of the first ever Patient Safety Commissioner and a genuine and touching apology from our Public Health Minister Ashley Dalton in March last year, concrete progress has been painfully slow.
Following on from the Cumberlege report, the Patient Safety Commissioner published the Hughes Report which laid out how the government can compensate the victims of the mesh and valproate scandals. It was intended to act as a blueprint to compensate those avoidably harmed by mesh and valproate, allowing them to rebuild their new lives which they had no part in consenting to.
However, next month will mark two years since the publication of the Hughes report and we are yet to receive an official government response. In response to the debate I led last year to mark the first anniversary, the Minister said that [she can] “appreciate frustrations about timescales, but this should not be rushed”.
I think it is reasonable to say that, on behalf of campaigners and those affected everywhere, frustration after two years of silence is not a matter of rushing a response but a matter of deserving one.
The government spends £3billion annually on clinical negligence cases. Health scandals therefore pose a significant burden on our healthcare system. This money is going to be spent anyway. The financial argument against compensation therefore does not hold.
But we do have a choice; should it go directly into the pockets of those irreversibly harmed through no fault of their own, or should it go on legal costs? I know where I would prefer my money to go.
I hope that 2026 brings more progress on both compensation for those harmed in these scandals and measures to prevent future health scandals. Campaigners and those harmed, including my own mam, have waited long enough.