British dismay over implant firm’s stance

The British government was asked to consider taking action against “unscrupulous” private firms refusing to replace PIP breast implants free of charge.

The Harley Medical Group, which fitted the implants to almost 14,000 British women, said that offering replacements would put it out of business and women would instead have to pay £2,800 to have them removed.

Liberal Democrat Baroness Hussein-Ece expressed “dismay and concern” at the firm’s announcement.

At question time in the House of Lords she told peers: “This is a group who for years and years have ruthlessly advertised, sold and fitted these substandard PIP implants and are now saying they won’t replace them.”

She asked Health Minister Earl Howe: “Isn’t it time to take action against these unscrupulous, it seems, private practitioners to make them take some responsibility?”

The minister told her: “We believe that private practitioners have in many instances a legal duty and certainly a moral duty to address these matters on behalf of their patients.

“Eight private companies are offering to replace implants for their patients. We welcome that. We are urging Harley Medical Group to follow suit.”

The government has said patients who had their surgery on the NHS would be able to have the implants removed and replaced free of charge.

The NHS will also pay to remove, but not replace, implants if a private clinic refuses or no longer exists.

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, chief executive of the charity Breast Cancer Campaign, said the PIP scandal was “causing a huge amount of concern for women with breast cancer”.

The former Labour minister, who now sits as an independent crossbench peer, said: “If women are diagnosed with breast cancer, treated privately and refused help from that private practitioner, when they come to the NHS at the moment they are only promised the removal of that PIP implant, not subsequent replacement and reconstruction.”

She told Lord Howe: “I don’t think that’s right and I hope you will be able to reconsider that.”

Lord Howe said most people agreed it would be “wrong to let private providers off the hook”.

He added: “We don’t see that other patients should be disadvantaged in this way, because every time the NHS picks up the tab for the private sector we are displacing patients in the NHS who are in need.”

Labour shadow health minister Baroness Thornton said the private providers had all been given their “stamp of approval” by the Care Quality Commission.

She asked what the implications would be under the “fragmentation and increased marketisation of the NHS” brought about by the controversial health and social care Bill.

“There is no suggestion that these clinics have been carrying out procedures badly,” Lord Howe replied. “The issue is around the quality of the implants which they couldn’t be expected to know about.”

He said the policy of allowing NHS work to be carried out by “any qualified provider” had been introduced by the previous government.